Chrome is officially moving away from Flash

Google Chrome is turning away from Flash to move on towards the lighter and faster HTML5 technology. In the future updates for Chrome, the browser will slowly start preferring HTML5 versions of websites over Flash versions. The next update for Chrome, i.e. version 53, is expected to release in September that will incorporate these changes.

This is what Google had to say on the matter:
“Today, more than 90% of the 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.”

However, the Chrome 53 update is just the beginning of it. In December, Google will release yet another update to Chrome (version 55), that will automatically enforce HTML5 websites over Flash (not leaving anything up to the users in this matter). Unless of course, a website supports only Flash which is when the user would need to turn on Flash support for the particular website only.

This move by Google has long been expected, particularly because Flash tends to make websites slower and heavier (hence consuming more bandwidth as well). HTML5 is an ideal replacement for Flash and browsers such as Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari have already started moving away from the outdated Flash.

Today, the primary aim of websites owners is to ensure that their website loads up quickly without consuming a large amount of the user’s data. With this move to kill Flash, Chrome is not only supporting this cause but saving you precious battery time as well, something it is not particularly good at right now.

Image source – TheRegister