Back in May Google announced that future versions of Google Chrome will no longer support Flash, and yesterday Google delivered on its promise – announcing official plans for Flash content support in the next Chrome versions. Google’s Anthony LaForge, the engineer tasked with managing Flash in Chrome, has stated that, beginning with Chrome’s next version, Chrome 53, set for release in September, the company intends to block any Flash content that’s “loaded behind the scenes.”
That means any content that is not directly visible on a webpage, such as analytics and ad-tracking scripts. According to Google Chrome’s statistics this type of Flash content makes up 90% of all Flash files, and should go a long way towards helping to improve performance and stability.
Today, more than 90% of Flash on the web loads behind the scenes to support things like page analytics. This kind of Flash slows you down, and starting this September, Chrome 53 will begin to block it. HTML5 is much lighter and faster, and publishers are switching over to speed up page loading and save you more battery life. You’ll see an improvement in responsiveness and efficiency for many sites.
Furthermore LaForge has also announced that by the release of Chrome 55 towards the end of 2016, HTML5 will be the default video and audio experience in Google Chrome. That means that when Chrome encounters any multimedia content it will automatically look for the HTML5 version first, and only if no HTML5 version exists will it show the Flash version. However Google will still block this content, allowing it to be played only after the user approves it.
