[SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

Altoid · 2021-07-20 19:55:13

Hello:

I think that the demise of Adobe's infamous Flash/Flash Player is a (most probably) good thing ...

Except for the fact that it has turned quite a few things upside down for me.

eg:
Although I can get my daily dose of Charles Schultz's Peanuts, I can no longer see my favourite political cartoonists' (Matt Davies) work every morning like I used to.

Watching films and series from pirate links posted on various sites (yes, so what?) has lost the possibility of adding *.srt subtitle files to the stream, needed when what I am watching is in a language I don't understand or when the Irish or Welsh accent makes it difficult to understand what's going on.
I can still watch the flics with whatever comes up in Palemoon 29 but there's no option for subtitles.

A couple of the newspapers/sites I read on-line apparently have Flash enabled pages so there are parts I cannot read and so on ...

What can be done to ameliorate this sad state of things?
Is there a replacement for Adobe Flash to be installed?

Thanks in advance,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2021-07-20 19:57:48)

andyprough · 2021-07-21 02:11:50

What can be done to ameliorate this sad state of things?

There's a project called "ruffle" that seeks to be a flash emulator. It is used by the Internet Archive to show a lot of their flash content. https://ruffle.rs/#releases

blackhole · 2021-07-21 06:49:22

Which newspapers/sites are still using flash...?

Altoid · 2021-07-21 11:35:50

Hello:

andyprough wrote:

... project called "ruffle" that seeks to be a flash emulator.
... used by the Internet Archive ...

Thanks for the suggestion, but Palemoon does not support WebExtensions.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2021-07-21 11:44:32)

Altoid · 2021-07-21 11:41:04

Hello:

blackhole wrote:

Which newspapers/sites are still using flash...?

In this site, https://projects.newsday.com/cartoons/o … rtoons/#!/ I cannot see the cartoonists' work.
In this site, https://www.theguardian.com/international some content does not render properly ie: as it did before.
I'm attributing it all to Flash, maybe I'm mistaken?

I've come across others.

Best,

A.

andyprough · 2021-07-21 13:28:06

Altoid wrote:

Hello:
andyprough wrote:
... project called "ruffle" that seeks to be a flash emulator.
... used by the Internet Archive ...
Thanks for the suggestion, but Palemoon does not support WebExtensions.
Best,
A.

Did you try the Palemoon forum? I'll bet moonchild and Tobin would just LOVE to argue with you over whether their browser should support pirated flash videos.

Let me know when you have that argument with them, I'll bring the popcorn and be a spectator.

Altoid · 2021-07-21 13:55:47

Hello:

andyprough wrote:

... try the Palemoon forum?

No.

andyprough wrote:

... moonchild and Tobin would just LOVE to argue with you ...

Not interested in arguing with anyone.

Best,

A.

andyprough · 2021-07-21 14:38:58

Altoid wrote:

Hello:
blackhole wrote:
Which newspapers/sites are still using flash...?
In this site, https://projects.newsday.com/cartoons/o … rtoons/#!/ I cannot see the cartoonists' work.
In this site, https://www.theguardian.com/international some content does not render properly ie: as it did before.
I'm attributing it all to Flash, maybe I'm mistaken?
I've come across others.
Best,
A.

I can view those sites and cartoons OK with Brave browser and with LibreWolf browser. Neither of those browsers have had flash enabled for a long time. Doesn't look like there's any flash problem with those two sites. Some sites just perform better with particular browsers, and most of them target Chrome/chromium, so using Brave or another chromium-based browser like ungoogled-chromium usually works. LibreWolf seems to work well on most sites, and LibreWolf has similar design goals to Palemoon, but is based on the more modern versions of Firefox - you might consider trying that one. You can try the LibreWolf appimage on Devuan from here if you like: https://gitlab.com/librewolf-community/ … -/releases

Altoid · 2021-07-21 15:07:27

Hello:

andyprough wrote:

... view those sites and cartoons OK with Brave browser and with LibreWolf browser.
... those browsers have had flash enabled for a long time.
Some sites just perform better with particular browsers ...
Doesn't look like there's any flash problem with those two sites.

The thing is that up to a few days I did not have these issues with Palemoon.

eg: the captcha feature some sites have is not working in my bank account.

I'll check those out but maybe something's gone awry (?) with my Palemoon installation.

Thanks for the heads up.

Best,

A.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2021-07-21 17:10:38

Both of the linked sites work fine for me. The cartoons need javascript to be displayed properly but my beloved Guardian still works even without that.

EDIT: I don't have Flash Player installed. Obviously. Using the firefox-esr package from Debian bullseye (Wayland enabled).

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2021-07-21 17:12:02)

Altoid · 2021-07-21 18:55:39

Hello:

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Both of the linked sites work fine for me.
... cartoons need javascript to be displayed properly but my beloved Guardian still works ...

Thanks for the info.

I may just have to dump Palemoon.
One of my favourites at The Guadian is the feature "Best photographs of the day", although I can see the photos, the captions are missing.

Could you check if it is a Flash thing or something else?

Thanks in advance.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2021-07-21 19:08:55)

golinux · 2021-07-21 19:28:58

Altoid wrote:

Could you check if it is a Flash thing or something else?

A browser should be able to "View Page Source" which would answer your question.

I am currently on Palemoon and this option is available.

anticapitalista · 2021-07-21 21:16:27

Altoid wrote:

Hello:
Thanks for the info.
I may just have to dump Palemoon.
One of my favourites at The Guadian is the feature "Best photographs of the day", although I can see the photos, the captions are missing.
Could you check if it is a Flash thing or something else?
Thanks in advance.
Best,
A.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Got to comment on the Grauniad typo for those in the know ...

Altoid · 2021-07-21 21:49:12

Hello:

anticapitalista wrote:

... comment on the Grauniad typo ...

Indeed ...
If nothing else, true to style. -> 8^D

Cheers,

A.

Altoid · 2021-07-22 12:15:59

Hello:

golinux wrote:

... "View Page Source" which would answer your question.

Thanks I'll have a look at that.

golinux wrote:

... currently on Palemoon and this option is available.

I'm on Pale Moon 29.3.0 64bit.

Maybe it is something else.
eg: see this post https://www.reddit.com/r/palemoon/comme … espond_to/.

If I left click on the "View entire discussion (10 comments)" tab, nothing happens.

---
Q: Does it work for you? - Can you click and see the next 10 comments?
---

Another thing is that sites which have a captcha are not showing it at all, I can only see it with some other browser.
ie: no on-screen indication of a captcha field whatsoever.

But I find both Firefox, Librewolf and probably anything else Firefox based to be unusable.
The way the drop down from the folders in the Bookmarks toolbar always opens to the right instead of opening to the side of the screen that has available space is a real PITA, probably the main reason I dropped Firefox. (I have a three screen setup, used to work perfectly well)

It got that way one day after an update and apparently (as far as I know) there's no way to fix it.
ie: no about:config setting.

I won't even go into what the UI has morphed into or the push to use their sync to back up everything in your browser.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2021-07-22 16:12:26)

zapper · 2021-07-23 03:03:29

andyprough wrote:

Altoid wrote:
Hello:
andyprough wrote:
... project called "ruffle" that seeks to be a flash emulator.
... used by the Internet Archive ...
Thanks for the suggestion, but Palemoon does not support WebExtensions.
Best,
A.
Did you try the Palemoon forum? I'll bet moonchild and Tobin would just LOVE to argue with you over whether their browser should support pirated flash videos.
Let me know when you have that argument with them, I'll bring the popcorn and be a spectator.

This is my only problem with them... ps, nobody pirates anything. Why do I say that? Because pirates sink ships, steal everything and very often murder the people onboard the ship.
Thus, "piracy" or "pirating" is massively inappropriate for saying that someone is getting something for free. Besides, as I said to them, the DRM built into most copyrighted non-free software, cannot even be modified, you don't even hardly own full access of the hardware/software you bought, and in some cases its even worse...

It's basically like you only have the right to use 30% of the capabilities and the rest is a blackbox.

aka, you are not allowed to modified your own bios without reverse engineering the hell out of stuff just to get it work.

You could call that jumping through a huge amount of random hoops.

Some even consider modifying copyright software and distributing a patch to the original software to be copyright infringement and thus "piracy"

I know most of you would probably agree o n the whole hardware issues I mention being completely and utter bull$hit.
That being said, I appreciate Moonchild and Tobin's work on the palemoon and basilisk browser, but they are dead wrong on this issue.

Also, the idea of blocking ads is even theft to a few people on those forums including Moonchild last I checked...

Thus he is misguided on some issues. I wish him well, but I won't agree on those two issues, aka copyright and its powers and of course advertisements...

If blocking ads = theft, privacy will start to erode even more.

And if copyright infringement includes modifying software your computer or hardware, privacy will also die even more rapidly.

If both happen, kiss privacy completely goodbye.

Yeah, sorry for the long winded reply, but these issues kind of freak me out.

No one needs to own a blackbox computer,

the way it should work is this:

Corporations, government = being spied on the low class and middle class not spied on!

The opposite though happens more often than not. It's bs really...

smh...

Kelsoo · 2021-07-23 10:51:42

I have SeaMonkey-2.53.8.1, Firefox 90.0.2 binaries installed and palemoon-29.0.1 built from source.

No flash, all the websites linked work. about:config is avalible in all of them as are web extentions though the number and choice is dependent on several factors.

I prefer Seamonkey because it has imo a better interface, and the suit. email, news reader, chatzilla, and composer all of which I use a lot. I's also lighter. The only issue I have with Seamonkey is it's harder to use webrtc. You need to set the default mic ouside the browser and use the not so secure addon. Remember to switch it off after using it and switching sites. Because of that I use firefox and user agent switcher when doing my NHS colsultations. (they require android, Windows or Apple and Chrome!).

Getting your bookmarks to display in the toolbar where you want them is surely just a matter of how you configure them. I have a master bookmark file about 4MB all my machines start with this file and each machines new bookmarks peridodicaly are imported into this master file.

Altoid · 2021-07-23 13:25:05

Hello:

Kelsoo wrote:

No flash, all the websites linked work. about:config is avalible ...

Sorry ...
When I made reference to about:config it was not because it was not available, it is.

I meant to say that I did not find anything in about:config which would get the drop down menus to work as they did before.
Or get the tabs below the toolbar as they were before, the option I found on the web is no longer available / no longer works.
ie: browser.tabs.onTop -> boolean: false

---> rant
No idea what these chaps at Firefox were thinking when they made these changes, but they lost me after many (many) years.
And from what I have read on-line, it seems there are a great many annoyed users like me.
<--- /rant

I filed a question here for the tabs drop down issue: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1344723
Let's see what I get from that.

I tried librewolf which worked fine, but it has the same UI issues (drop down to the wrong side and tabs on top) which do not seem to be something about:config can solve. I will keep it installed as a back up option just in case.

From what I was seeing, there was something .js related that got screwed up in Pale Moon and not problem with Flash.
After hours searching for a clue/lead to fix it, I decided to do something I loathe: rip out everything and start over.

ie: à la MS. 8^|

I backed up my /home/user/palemoon folder and my bookmarks to an external drive.
Then carefully weeded out any and all Pale Moon related files, rebooted and checked again to make sure absolutely everything was gone.

I then copied the palemoon folder back in place.

Result?
It now works as it was working before all this went down.

Something got very seriously screwed up in the Pale Moon installation.
Maybe a configuration file?
No idea which or where but it seems it was not in the /home/user/palemoon folder.

I think it could have been some script related add-on I tried which, when uninstalled, did not leave things as it had found them.
Hence the .js issues.

I any case, problem solved.

Thanks to all who pitched in.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2021-07-23 13:30:13)

Altoid · 2021-07-25 14:53:55

Hello:

Altoid wrote:

... filed a question here for the tabs drop down issue: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1344723

Maybe it is now a moot point.
Seeing that Pale Moon did not suffer from this and other innovations, I asked at the Pale Moon forum.

ron_1 wrote:

Pale Moon is a hard fork of Firefox. There isn't any new mozilla code that will find its way into PM. It's been this way for quite a while now.

I did not know that.

It seems a good reason to stay with Pale Moon, LibreWolf does not follow the same path.
As always, YMMV.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2021-07-25 14:57:46)

zapper · 2021-08-03 03:34:16

Altoid wrote:

Hello:
Altoid wrote:
... filed a question here for the tabs drop down issue: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1344723
Maybe it is now a moot point.
Seeing that Pale Moon did not suffer from this and other innovations, I asked at the Pale Moon forum.
ron_1 wrote:
Pale Moon is a hard fork of Firefox. There isn't any new mozilla code that will find its way into PM. It's been this way for quite a while now.
I did not know that.
It seems a good reason to stay with Pale Moon, LibreWolf does not follow the same path.
As always, YMMV.
Best,
A.

I wouldn't say they don't use new code, 29.2 and onward got rid of legacy extensions, aka, ones supported by firefox esr52.9 and older.

XUL hasn't been deprecated to be clear, just the ones that worked on firefox before ESR60 and firefox 57+,

As for new code, the new code is, mostly code to fix the problems firefox developers refused to, such as telemetry, tracking, data collection, insecurities, stuff like that.

The last type of code, that is new, is the useragent stuff...

That's about all I think that is new code. But they do it differently then mozilla, so I imagine it is far more stable/secure.

Anywho, you can find out about many of these misconceptions on palemoon's forum:

https://forum.palemoon.org/viewforum.php?f=24

PS, I don't use palemoon, I use a fork of Basilisk Browser, known as Iceweasel-uxp.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2021-07-20 19:55:13

[SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#2 2021-07-21 02:11:50

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#3 2021-07-21 06:49:22

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#4 2021-07-21 11:35:50

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#5 2021-07-21 11:41:04

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#6 2021-07-21 13:28:06

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#7 2021-07-21 13:55:47

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#8 2021-07-21 14:38:58

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#9 2021-07-21 15:07:27

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#10 2021-07-21 17:10:38

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#11 2021-07-21 18:55:39

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#12 2021-07-21 19:28:58

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#13 2021-07-21 21:16:27

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#14 2021-07-21 21:49:12

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#15 2021-07-22 12:15:59

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#16 2021-07-23 03:03:29

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#17 2021-07-23 10:51:42

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#18 2021-07-23 13:25:05

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#19 2021-07-25 14:53:55

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

#20 2021-08-03 03:34:16

Re: [SOLVED] Browsers and the demise of Adobe Flash Player

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