Ah yes, why not? The last time we did this, it was March 2011, so it's been almost a year since we offered a little insight into what kind of operating systems and browsers you, dear readers, are using. Nothing particularly earth-shattering going on here.
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Member since:2009-05-21
On my windows partition, I only enable Flash in IE (mainly for viewing YouTube), and most of the time I use FireFox. On Linux I did not even bother to install Flash, as I have Chrome installed and use VP8 for YouTube playback.
Member since:2005-07-11
On my windows partition, I only enable Flash in IE (mainly for viewing YouTube), and most of the time I use FireFox. On Linux I did not even bother to install Flash, as I have Chrome installed and use VP8 for YouTube playback. "
Chrome ships with Adobe Flash pre-installed as part of the browser install. Thus, you do have Flash installed.
Just check the plugins page in Chrome, and you'll see it listed there. Even on Linux.
Member since:2007-09-22
The last few weeks YouTube has been pushing out changes and A/B testing* changed to perfect their support for WebM/HTML5 video.
For example, if you enable html5-support for Youtube at: http://youtube.com/html5
And you visit a different site with a YouTube video enabled, it is very much possible it will be displayed in HTML5/WebM.
I've also seen that YouTube has started to enable HTTPS support.
That means that https://youtube.com/ could be the default in the future. This is to protect the login-cookie users use (used by people who upload and comment).
Only the video is downloaded over HTTP from the caching servers (it is a different domain, thus the cookie won't be sent in that case).
Also they are enabling HTTPS so they can enable the use of SPDY.
SPDY is the faster 'HTTP-transport'-method of loading pages from Google as implemented in Chrome and maybe Firefox 10, but probably Firefox 11.
* A/B testing is that certain users temporarily see the new version and other users see the original. This is to test what happends when you enable new code without impacting all users if something does not work.
Member since:2008-11-22
Member since:2010-11-07
Member since:2010-07-16
Member since:2006-04-01
Member since:2006-04-01
My little experiment is meeting with mixed-success. Most techy sites have been reasonably usable. But apparently Taco Bell felt that having Flash on their front page was critical and told me I needed Flash ("This site requires that you have Adobe Flash installed on your computer. Click here to download and install Flash."). Thankfully I didn't really need their site to get the info I wanted.
Member since:2008-11-20
Everyone? My computer has no Flash installed since about two years. Maybe I'm lucky, but all websites I consider worth visiting work. Embedded youtube videos don't show, but they work when watched on youtube directly, so I can live with that. Who knows, perhaps I even stumble upon a solution to that one day.
Member since:2006-12-18
I use IE8 a lot, and only load Flash on selected white-listed websites (OSnews obviously not being one of them).
That's actually one of the neatest features in IE (second only to InPrivate Filtering): open the Tools menu > Manage Add-ons, select Shockwave Flash Object, click on More information (lower pane), then click on Remove from all sites.
Now every website that wants to run Flash will show a non-intrusive gold bar at the top, and let you choose whether you agree or not.
And then you realize that virtually every web site wants you to run it, even when there's no visible Flash content, and that its primary use is NOT as a multimedia framework, but as yet another user tracking system.
(Disabling local storage in Flash also somewhat limits its usefulness for trackers; but not running it at all if not needed it definitely the best option.)
Edited 2012-01-10 02:53 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2011-09-02
Everyone install Adobe's Flash Player 'just in case™'. I cannot see any reason to deliberately uninstall it. Until content providers reduce the amount of content that require Flash the situation will not change anytime soon. If you buy a new computer its at that point you decide what things you should install or you install it when its needed, people never actively decide to uninstall something unless it breaks.
Less focus on alternative operating systems this year I feel?
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