A few days ago, a confusing “performance art” appeared on my computer. On the one hand, a news pop-up window appeared in the lower right corner, and the new version of Win10 will completely delete Flash. On the other hand, a larger window popped up, telling me “Your Flash Player has been updated”. I didn’t ask me before watching the posture update. I need to agree to use it by default.
This news made Flash, a software we haven’t noticed for a long time, appeared in our vision again, or appeared in such a magical way, and successfully attracted my attention.
According to official Microsoft news, in the latest preview version of Windows 10, the Flash configuration options have disappeared from the control panel, and Flash Player has also become an empty file in the system disk. Adobe, the old owner of Flash Player, has already stated that it plans to end Flash support by the end of 2020.
Recently, Adobe has set this deadline on the last day of 2020, and will not release any updates and security patches for Flash after that. However, Adobe deliberately left a tail for the majority of Chinese users. In October last year, Adobe officially announced that it will continue to cooperate with Chinese agencies to support the exclusive distribution and maintenance of Flash Player in mainland China.
We can’t help asking, what is this wave of operations? Why almost all major manufacturers have given up “treating” Flash and become the Deadline of Flash by the end of 2020? And why is Adobe officially “favoring” Chinese consumers and want to keep the last “enclave” in China? Will Flash leave us? This is the question that this article will focus on.
Seeing Flash rise from the top: the beginning of short videos and mini games
The first time I came into contact with Flash was when I saw the popular “Self-study Song for College Students” in the Internet cafes in the county. The ridiculously ridiculous rap and happy animated video made a ignorant teenager For the first time, I had a glimmer of longing for the university. Later, in the summer vacation, I also learned the Three Musketeers on the Web for a week in a computer training class. Among them, there was Flash animation production. Unfortunately, there was no creative talent to give up.
Unexpectedly, Flash will usher in its own bright moment in the next few years. With the popularity of PCs, various Flash animations and games are popular all over the country.
Flash was originally developed in the early 90s by a brushstroke software company called FutureWave, originally called CelAnimator, and later renamed FutureSplash Animator for the purpose of publicity.
In 1996, Macromedia, which launched the Three Musketeers of the web afterwards, acquired FutureWave together with FutureSplash, and then combined Future and Splash, which became the Flash of the future web era.
In 2005, when Adobe acquired Macromedia, 98% of Internet-connected PCs had Flash installed.
The earliest Internet speed is still calculated in KB, so it supports its own compact vector format. SLP’s FutureSplash became the popular animation software at that time. Around 2000, because of Macromedia’s multiple updates to Flash and the launch of the Chinese version, Flash, together with the Flash culture it brought, began to explode in the domestic Internet world.
I believe that the veteran netizens who came from that era will treasure the Flash short films, GIF pictures and mini games that were all the rage at the time. In addition to the “Self-study Songs for College Students” that was popular on the Internet, classic secondary creations such as “Northeast People Are Living Lei Feng” and “Rock on the New Long March Road” appeared one after another.
Since then, a large number of high-quality Flash animations have appeared, and some works have survived the rise and fall of the Internet and have survived until now. For example, the “Mung Bean Frog” series that is still being broadcasted by the Beijing Subway, and the “Blooming and Big Big Wolf” series that led the post-90s childhood. There are also some animation classics based on Flash technology, such as “Big Fish and Begonia”, “Luo Xiaohei Zhan Ji”, “Miss Puff” and so on. Talking too much can easily trigger a wave of memory killing.
In addition to animation, Flash games also play a pivotal role in everyone’s Internet experience.
I remember that when I went to my girlfriend’s house, I always had to accompany my girlfriend’s brother to log on to a website called 4399, and come to a few games of “The Forest Fireman” or “Gold Miner”. Many adults’ online gaming experience may have started with a food stealing battle called “Happy Farm” or a game called “Car Space Robber” by Kaixin. Without exception, these are all made with Flash.
In addition, Flash websites are also very common. At that time, pop-up advertisements, video website players and some online work were supported by Flash.
Flash’s prosperous ecology is due to the limitations of Internet speed in the early days of the Internet, and it also has its own advantages. On the one hand, Flash has become the most mainstream online by relying on its small vector files and the streaming function of “playing from side to side” On the other side of the multimedia file is the simple visual operation interface of Flash, which greatly reduces the development threshold for creators, provides the best development platform for many creators, and spawns a wave of original content ecology of the domestic Internet after the new millennium.
With the advent of the mobile Internet era, the mobile operating system’s skepticism and rejection of Flash from the very beginning makes Flash inevitably missed another opportunity for development. A new era called HTML5 has begun.
Seeing that the Flash building has collapsed: the era of mobile inability to advance
Flash was once regarded as the “eternal existence” of the Internet era, but it was abandoned when it entered the mobile Internet era. The first to challenge Flash was the leader of Qiao, because when Apple was developing the original iPhone, it found that the operation of Flash plug-ins consumes a lot of power and takes up CPU resources very seriously. The most important thing on the mobile terminal is battery life and response speed. , So Apple chose not to support Flash from the beginning.
Special version of Flash, in fact, it’s not necessary
Adobe’s special care for users in mainland China is actually closely related to Adobe’s exclusive agency business in mainland China. Some professionals revealed that Adobe once authorized an agent in China to agree to launch a Flash version specifically for mainland China. The feature of this version is that it blatantly stated in the user agreement that “the user’s online privacy can be collected”, and it also stated that “the user is fully aware of this situation and will not be held responsible for it.”
Even if the Chinese people are so insensitive to privacy protection, they cannot directly look at such naked snooping of private information. In addition, a few years ago, people also found that downloading Adobe Flash Player would automatically bind to download a game center, because it caused dissatisfaction among users and even hit Baidu’s hot words. Now you can find a lot of information on how to avoid bundling this game when updating Flash Player
Heart’s post.
In October last year, Adobe’s official Weibo and China official website publicly announced that it will continue to cooperate with this agent and support its exclusive distribution and maintenance of Flash Player in mainland China. In June of this year, Adobe’s official Weibo reiterated again. Mainland Chinese users can still enjoy the latest version of Flash Player download, operation and technical maintenance services after 2020.
Adobe pointed out that it is necessary to respect the unique distribution channels and usage habits of mainland China, which is probably translated into the vernacular. On the one hand, there are indeed a large number of websites still using Flash-developed webpages, and users who use old versions of windows need to continue to use them. Flash plug-in, and on the other hand, this unique distribution still has huge commercial traffic. The essence of using the above Weibo users to point out is that Flash can continue to deliver ads to China.
This is that there is no love for no reason, and there is no good for no reason. When giving help to the majority of users, we always have to get something back from it.
Obviously, for Chinese users who have adopted the latest version of the Win10 system, they will obviously no longer continueContinue to need this version of Flash service. Only by leaving Flash happily, cleanly and completely, can users really miss it in the future.
Perhaps for many people, putting Flash that ends the historical mission on the 2020 farewell list is a truly formal farewell.