Adobe ends support for Flash and will start blocking Flash content from January 12; major browsers will block Flash content from Jan. 1

Adobe ends support for Flash and will start blocking Flash content from January 12; major browsers will block Flash content from Jan. 1 — It’s the end of the line — Adobe scheduled its famous Flash software to end on December 31st, 2020, and today is the day.

Flash is riding off into the sunset with Adobe

The end of support for Adobe’s famous Flash software was scheduled for December 31st, 2020, and that day has finally arrived. Although Adobe won’t start blocking Flash content until January 12th, major browsers will start blocking Flash content tomorrow, and Microsoft will begin blocking Flash content across most versions of Windows when it comes to Chrome and Firefox. The event has come to an end.

In the past decade, Flash has played a major role in internet history, which might be one of the reasons why its funeral procession has lasted for so long. The browser companies started showing Flash the door early in the last decade, and Adobe then asked developers to switch to HTML5 shortly thereafter. After Adobe announced in 2017 that it would cease to support the product, things became official.

Although Adobe has finally (mercifully) decided to let go of Flash, many historical artifacts that have been created by it will live on. Among the well-known animations are “Peanut Butter Jelly Time,” and a number of other games and animations are being preserved by the Internet Archive.

My experience with Flash became more intense when I started using it for the first time as a high school student, making stuff on my generic HP desktop PC with a fully-legitimate copy of Adobe software. It was a long time ago when I was struggling to figure out how to animate motion tweens in the Flash editor, and I still remember struggling to figure out how to do it the next time I saw some fancy words slide into a corporate presentation. I can remember those days so clearly.

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