Mozilla: 'no plans' to bundle Flash with Firefox
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Unlike Google, Mozilla says it's not committed to the idea of integrating Adobe Flash with its web browser.
"Mozilla has no current plans to bundle Flash with Firefox downloads," the open source outfit said in an email to The Reg. "Mozilla has always made it easy to install Flash and other plugins via the Automatic Plugin Finder Service, which has been part of Firefox for years."
Earlier this week, Google announced it intends to integrate Adobe Systems' Flash with its Chrome browser as quickly as possible, and it had already bundled the plug-in with Chrome's developer build.
Famously, Apple chief Steve Jobs has barred Flash from the iPhone and the imminent IPad, calling it "buggy," littered with security holes, and a "CPU hog." But rather than shun the plug-in, Google has vowed to embrace it in an effort to improve stability and security problems.
Unlike other browser makers, Google automatically updates its browser without user approval and Flash will become part of this silent update. The company also says that it will include Flash content in the Chrome "sandbox," which restricts the system privileges of the browser's rendering engine.
Google likes to trumpet the HTML5 standard as the future of the web. But clearly, it also intends to keep the plug-in alive - especially Flash. Flash is, among other things, a widely used online advertising technology, and we all know how much Google enjoys advertising.
It's unclear whether Google will allow the user to prevent Chrome from installing Flash.
Mountain View is also developing a new browser plug-in API, and with a blog post earlier this week, said both Mozilla and Adobe had joined this effort. When asked, Mozilla declined to discuss this effort, merely providing the statement that it has no plans to bundle Flash with Firefox.
But Google is going whole hog. "Improving the traditional browser plug-in model will make it possible for plug-ins to be just as fast, stable, and secure as the browser’s HTML and JavaScript engines," the search giant said in a blog post. "Over time this will enable HTML, Flash, and other plug-ins to be used together more seamlessly in rendering and scripting."
Meanwhile, Mozilla has pushed out a Firefox developer preview that runs Flash and other plug-ins as a separate process.
The second developer preview of what will become Firefox 4.0 includes what Mozilla calls out-of-process_plug-ins (OOPP), which uses a shim layer to execute the plug-in API, separating it from the browser proper. So far, the open sourcers have tested the technology with Flash and SilverLight. ®
COMMENTS
Thank you, El Reg!
What with recent revelations that Chrome is chatting back every keypress in the URL bar (WTF?), and now that updates are pushed out silently...
...I have enough reasons to never install the bugger.
Again. For I tried it a few weeks back, and uninstalled it less than a minute later, for it and its 47Mb installer stuck themselves in \Documents and Settings\<name>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google - WTF? What's wrong with Program Files like everything else? Or maybe Chrome can't handle multi-user setups? It's the first time in my life I've seen an app install itself to that location. Oh, and the Google installer just "did it" with no input from me. It never asked *where* I'd like to install...
I would Fail icon for Google, but after what they've just done to YouTube, there aren't enough Epic Fail euphemisms to describe it. So heart for El Reg for giving solid reasons to avoid it like it has H1N1... ;-)
"buggy," littered with security holes"
Funny, sounds exactly like OSX to me.
Hey look at my OS wang!!!!!
Every bloody time "well my (OS of choice) is far better than (your OS of choice). Please fanbois ohh please just stop. Why must you soil my morning reading. All OS's crash once you put a load on them at some point. Software is buggy and sometimes handles things improperly.
So to close, (your OS of choice) sucks, mines better.
/rant
p.s. I'm aware of the irony
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