No, Firefox is not dropping support for Flash (as was wrongly reported by the news media). Firefox blocked versions of Flash that were being actively exploited by hackers. Adobe has since released a new version of Flash which is not blocked.

Mozilla had "soft-blocked" version 18.0.0.203 and earlier. What is that? Instead of letting all sites use Flash automatically, which was the default setting, Flash was temporarily switched to requiring sites to have express permission to use Flash, to help protect against "drive by" attacks.

If you are not accustomed to using the "Ask to Activate" feature with any of your plugins, here's how it works:

When you visit a site that wants to use Flash, you should see a notification icon in the address bar and usually (but not always) one of the following: a link in a black rectangle in the page or an infobar sliding down between the toolbar area and the page.

The plugin notification icon in the address bar typically looks like a small, dark gray Lego block. When the page wants to use a soft-blocked plugin, the icon turns red to alert you to the concern.

If you see a good reason to use Flash, and the site looks trustworthy, you can go ahead and click the notification icon in the address bar to allow Flash. You can trust the site for the time being or permanently.

But some pages use Flash only for tracking or playing ads, so if you don't see an immediate need for Flash, feel free to ignore the notification! It will just sit there in case you want to use it later.

p.shekar said

Is firefox dropping support of flash plugin? - http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/14/technology/flash-firefox-facebook/index.html If yes, is the block on flash plugin temporary or permanent?

So many people being mislead by that article.

Mozilla added the now previous versions to blocklist on last Monday as vulneral bility was known for a while. Then on early last Tuesday Adobe released the current versions of Flash player (for Windows and Mac OSX) that is currently not being soft blocked as in on blocklist. Adobe released the update for Linux (plugin based) on later Wednesday.

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/blocked/

So Mozilla rather has not dropped support for Flash player yet, just soft blocking any previous versions that are found to be vulnerable by critical exploits on Windows, Mac OSX and or Linux. Unfortunately it has been most versions since December 2014.

James said

So many people being mislead by that article.

I think the author might have taken the block announcement a little too literally because it says "The problematic add-on or plugin will be automatically disabled and no longer usable" without explaining that it still could be activated manually.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/blocked/p946

jscher2000 said

James said

So many people being mislead by that article.

I think the author might have taken the block announcement a little too literally because it says "The problematic add-on or plugin will be automatically disabled and no longer usable" without explaining that it still could be activated manually.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/blocked/p946

Also the timing as the article was written day after the now previous versions were added to list but I guess was not aware there were new updates from Adobe earlier that day which were not on blocklist.

There seems to be a noticeable increase this time in which people thought Mozilla or rather the Firefox browser no longer supports Flash player.