As the physical world only has a limited number of places to occupy, the Occupy movement is now going virtual. In one virtual offshoot, a group of developers has launched Occupy Flash, “the movement to rid the world of the Flash Player” plug-in.
On a new Web site of that name, this descendant of Occupy Wall Street — and countless other Occupy variations — say in their manifesto that the “Flash Player is dead.”
‘A Fossil’
The time of Flash has passed, according to the group. They say the nearly universal desktop and laptop plug-in is “buggy,” crashes frequently, “requires constant security updates,” doesn’t work well on mobile devices and is “a fossil, left over from the era of closed standards and unilateral corporate control of Web technology.”
If it’s so ancient, why worry about it? The group said it’s not conducting a campaign against Adobe, maker of Flash, but is “simply trying to help them” get to the era of open Web standards “a little faster.”
In other words, getting users to remove their Flash plug-in will force the embrace of modern open standards and will “invalidate old technology.” But the group acknowledges that the effort currently comes with some “pain and sacrifice.” Users will not be able to access Flash-based sites in their full form until the sites convert to HTML5, the alternative standards-based technologies that do not need a browser plug-in.
To help you toward the pain that will bring a brighter, Flash-less, standards-based future, the site offers Flash detection and links to Adobe’s uninstall page for Mac and PC, and to Google’s uninstall directions for its Chrome browser.
The budding movement’s members have chosen to remain anonymous, but they told the BBC that they have all coded Flash at some point, and have never worked for an Adobe competitor.
‘Tipping Point’
One unnamed…
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