Following Adobe’s announcement today that it will end support for Flash in 2020, Microsoft has published a timeline showing how it will gradually phase out its Flash support on Edge and IE.
Today, Adobe announced that it will end support for Flash in 2020. The company will continue to support Flash until then — with security updates, and by maintaining OS and browser compatibility — before discontinuing all support just under three and a half years from now.
Like its leading rivals in the browser market, Microsoft has already started phasing out its support for Flash. With the Windows 10 Creators Update, its Edge browser introduced Click-to-Run functionality, blocking Flash content by default. Newer web standards now offer similar capabilities to Flash, without the security concerns, weakened performance, and poor battery life with which the Adobe product has become synonymous.
Coinciding with Adobe’s announcement today, Microsoft announced its plans to completely phase out Flash support from Edge, and from the older Internet Explorer browser, by 2020:
Microsoft pointed out that its timeline for phasing out Flash support is consistent with plans outlined by its rivals’ browsers — including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari .
Microsoft’s John Hazen, Principal Program Manager Lead for the Edge browser, acknowledged that Flash «led the way on the web for rich content, gaming, animations, and media of all kinds, and inspired many of the current web standards powering HTML5.»
Source: Windows Blogs
