With Chrome 45 only the main Flash content will be enabled, the rest being paused unless the user decides to manually start it.
Earlier this year Google disabled NPAPI plug-ins (Java, Unity, Silverlight), starting with Chrome 42. Users have still been able to manually re-enable such plug-ins from the chrome://flags page, but that is supposed to change starting with Chrome 45, to be launched on September 1st, when support for NPAPI will be completely removed.
At the same time, Google will introduce a restriction regarding Flash: if Flash content is present in a web page, Chrome will detect and run the most important content, such as a video player, pausing all other Flash. Users will still be able to run the other content but they will have to manually choose to do so. This measure will impact many web pages around the world that are still using Adobe’s technology.
Google motivates their action with the desire to save battery life on laptops, notebooks and tablets. There are websites with many poorly implemented Flash animations, primarily advertisements, that drain the battery.
For those running their ads through their AdWords network, Google has provided automatic conversion of Flash content to HTML5, a solution that does not work for all SWF files.
In July, Firefox decided to temporarily block all Flash content due to a 0-day vulnerability, encouraging developers to switch to HTML5. Alex Stamos, Chief Security Officer at Facebook, suggested to Adobe to set the “end-of-life date for Flash“ to force developers to switch to HTML5. All these developments indicate that the days are numbered for Flash, and sooner or later Flash developers will have to embrace HTML5.
