The way I see it, moving beyond flash is going to be very important for WarGear to survive.

 

Adobe is stopping flash distribution at the end of the year, and encouraging everyone to move out of using flash. There is a lot written about the security issues with flash.

Most importantly, after the end-of-life of Flash at the end of 2020, Google (Chrome), Mozilla (Firefox) and Microsoft (Internet Explorer) have all said that they will block Flash from being run on their browsers. Which means almost all internet users can no longer run anything with Flash.

I believe a lot of users on WarGear prefer the Flash player. They will be forced to move to the Native, if another similar (maybe HTML5 based) player is not there. It's possible that will cause several users to leave. Not to mention that there is a lot of content on WG available only with Flash (charts, including luck charts).

 

 

There were a few posts in the last 24 hours with users experiencing some problems with the Flash player. To be honest, I don't think fixing issues with the flash player is the way to go. We should rather be looking towards moving beyond it.

 

 

I've always preferred the native player, but there are boards like Go-Geared that won't allow the native player when using your phone, which is what I use a lot of the time to take my turns

I'm not a computer expert - so, a basic question -

Most of the site interface runs off of flash correct? I know we have the native player to replace the flash player, but aren't the charts and board editor Flash based? How about the game join page?

Amidon37 wrote:

but aren't the charts and board editor Flash based? How about the game join page?

Pratik mentioned that charts are in the original post on this board, and I'm pretty sure the Designer is too.

Chele Nica wrote:

I've always preferred the native player, but there are boards like Go-Geared that won't allow the native player when using your phone, which is what I use a lot of the time to take my turns

 Yeah, As the designer of that board I'm bracing for the news that it may have to be retired unless I go in and replace certain colors, which will kind of ruin the effect. 

The good news is there seem to be a lot of Tom sightings recently, even if it is to deal with bugs ..of the coding and human types too. Hopefully the recent surge in activity on the site has caught his attention.  I can't imagine what the site would be like if the ability to create and modify boards disappeared.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's wondered about what's going to happen.

Huge +1

and I pretty much exclusively use the native player, but if not addressed it would lead to the possibly slow, but eventual demise of the site with all the broken features and functions.

has anyone reached out to him with a direct PM/email with this question? 

hi - I have given this thought but not started to panic just yet.

Good to know you have put some thought into this, Tom

Tom, I appreciate that you are still being a good caretacker after all these years.

What about the designer?  If flash goes away, will you upgrade that to HTML5?   Is there anything you can do to distribute the work load?  i.e. any chance of putting some of the relevant code on github?   I don't know how much I can help, but if you are willing to do it, I will pledge to spend a few hours a week doing my best to help out (not a front-end developer, but I am a software engineer who is used to learning new things).

I figured I would check on this before I renew for another year.  I am glad to see Tom is addressing it.  I cannot stand using the Native player, so I hope we get a suitable replacement for the flash player.

ogg wrote:

I figured I would check on this before I renew for another year.  I am glad to see Tom is addressing it.  I cannot stand using the Native player, so I hope we get a suitable replacement for the flash player.

Like you ogg, I couldn’t stand the Native interface, but I must say, I’ve gotten somewhat used to it and can pretty much do whatever I need to do with it. I think there must have been slight improvements to it over the years and now I find it serviceable.

ogg wrote:

I cannot stand using the Native player,

Curious why - 

I'm curious too; i almost exclusively use Native (other than the few boards that don't operate on it). only time i load a flash game is when i need to brute force my browser to load flash for the luck stats...

Same here I had only ever used the native. Tried the flash player a couple of times and never had any appeal

T-21 days... I'm curious will there be a lot of changes around here to fully remove/replace Flash stuff?

Is the only thing that still relies on flash the board designer?  (other than the flash player, for which the HTML player is a reasonable substitute).

history, flash player (which a few boards rely on as they break in the native), stats... most everything reallyi; except for native player...

Are there any browsers that will not block Flash, so one can use the unupdated version for a while?

Litotes wrote:

Are there any browsers that will not block Flash, so one can use the unupdated version for a while?

 

You might want to look for discontinued browsers then.

Here you may find a list of old browsers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers

 

However, the security of said discontinued browsers can be ... buggy at best.