12 Dec The Death of Flash: Why most Business Websites are moving on

In the fast-paced world of technology, one must be able to keep up, or you’ll be left behind. Ironic as the name, Adobe Flash Player got left behind, and died.

Flash player had been on its deathbed for a long time. It has been buggy, constantly crashing and always needed an update. Not to mention the risk in security for anyone using it. Yep, it has failed to keep up and match the needs of the ever-growing mobile market. Alas, it is a bittersweet farewell.

What is Flash Player in the first place?

Adobe Flash player is a software used to crate and view multimedia like video, audio and animation and the common format used for online games and desktop application. It was born in 1996; just a few years after web started out and it was no surprise that it became the standard of multimedia formats.  Flash player reigned for many years until it became a hassle due to poor performance and modern formats like HTML5 showed up.

Why it’s no longer widely acceptable

Since 2010, Apple has stopped supporting flash on its operating system. April that year, late co-founder and CEO at that time, Steve Jobs, published an open letter called “Thoughts on Flash” stating that Flash caused poor performance, impacted battery life, and had poor security. “ We don’t want to reduce the reliability and security of our iPhones, iPods and iPads by adding Flash”, the founder stated.

July last year, leaked documents from government-funded group called Hacking Team was discovered to be using at least three unpatched Flash exploits to reportedly hack into people’s accounts and take over their computers, a clear proof of Flash’s poor security.

Following  the incident, both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox pulled support for Flash and soon after, others had banned the flawed program in their systems as well.

Will it affect your business?

The Flash’s extinction is actually good news.  So, what good does it brings now that Flash player is gone? A LOT. With its extinction, your business information will no longer be vulnerable to cyber attacks. It will be better for your computer’s sanitary and security, making your system run faster and battery-efficient.

Web browsers and websites are now Flash-free as well as mobile devices, and they’re all doing great without it so far. With the improvement and uprising of HTML5, Flash’s extermination will not be missed.

As a business owner with an outdated website though, this news might not bode well for you…. for now. If your website runs on some awesome animations on Flash, no one will get to see that anymore.

Flash was created during the era of mouse and desktop, and we are now in the Touch-screen era. Flash just isn’t working well anymore, and with the majority of customers being mobile users, we need to embrace the now, to be efficient and effective. Take it from the Flash, keep up or you’ll be left behind.

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