> I spent years hoping for Apple to see the light, allow other browser engines
as soon as apple tried to remove flash, they've shown their hand tbh. While it was generally considered good, the ideology behind removal of flash is the same ideology for their policy to not allow other browser engines.
Strong disagree here. Flash represented a proprietary takeover of web standards. It was bad technology with a bad license and had bad consequences. Apple’s ideology resulted in a pure gain for the open web.
Apple’s dictatorial control over browser engines on iOS represents, somewhat ironically, the last significant defense in the cause of browser engine diversity. While Apple’s motives might be less pure here, the outcomes are no less of a win for the open web.
The outcomes are definitely less of a win for the open web in many cases. It is astounding that I have to deal with Apple proponents unironically trying to argue that WebM and Opus are bad things.
Of course Safari on iOS supports Opus, but it just doesn't support it in any standard container... which is one of the most pointless things I can think of.
Wikimedia doesn't care. They just load a polyfill with WebAssembly-compiled codecs for VP8/9/AV1/Opus/etc. and do it on CPU. The net effect is that iPhone users get a worse Wikipedia experience for basically no reason.
I don't disagree that support for open codecs should be more of a priority for Apple/Safari/WebKit. But you're missing the bigger picture. The web should be resilient to clients which don't support all of the latest features. It shouldn't be necessary to be using a bleeding edge version of Google Chrome (or its clones) in order to have a first class web browsing experience.
While one might complain about the inconvenience of supporting the few gaps in Safari on iOS, this complaint is actually of having to support people who don't (or can't) run the latest software because they (for example) haven't chosen to pay money to upgrade their computing device to something which supports Windows 10 or a recent release of MacOS.
The fact that Safari on iOS isn't bleeding edge is actually an under-appreciated gift to people who choose to/are forced to run older software. It's one of the last vectors forcing lazy web developers (i.e. most web developers) to continue taking browser diversity seriously.
Came to mention that you don't need a rooted Android to run uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock, Enhancer for YouTube, Augmented Steam, Decentraleyes, I Don't Care About Cookies, Violentmonkey, or Darkreader... you just need FF Nightly:
Note one thing, if your collection name contains spaces, you need to use the hyphenated version - basically the url segment that is in the collection's url when viewing it in the browser. That's not said in the article and it wasted some time for me.
Adobe very poorly maintained it, it had constant security issues, it was poorly coded, and was abused as an ad platform.
When Linux moved to amd64 / 64bit exes, it took them years to port it from 32bit to 64bit. Why? The codebase was a mess, and they put one dude on it, and his complaints leaked all over the place (I'm sorry it's taking me so long, but this codebase is a mess of spaghetti, I'm having to re-write the whole thing, etc)..
As with everything Adobe buys, their only goal was to ride it into the ground. It is a testament to how popular flash was, that they even updated it at all, ever!
Apple/Jobs may have had fiscal reasons for this move, but it was a great benefit for all regardless.
I had no idea it was this bad behind the curtain. My association with Flash is positive, though entirely for the animation culture it engendered and not the problems like these. I wonder whether Director/Shockwave was any better?
Also, mad respect to the developers at http://ruffle.rs, who are having to do it _again_! Maybe they have a chance to implement the Flash runtime cleanly.
Heck yes. This shouldn't even be a controversial statement. Flash was famous for its seemingly perpetual conga line of serious security vulnerabilities. It laughed at the browser security model. The web is a much, much, much, much, much better place because it was forced to die.
Flash was a kind of devious problem in the same way as IE was and Chrome is:
Those who depended on it got benefits while messing up the lives for everyone else.
To be fair to IE and its modern replacement Chrome, if you develop and test mostly on IE and Chrome you can make things cross browser if you put effort into it, something you couldn't with Flash.
Getting rid of Flash - whatever the reasons was - was a huge gift to the web and by extension people like me who develop on and for an open web.
as soon as apple tried to remove flash, they've shown their hand tbh. While it was generally considered good, the ideology behind removal of flash is the same ideology for their policy to not allow other browser engines.