Mozilla to block Flash in Firefox starting August

Mozilla's Firefox browser will now block flash content which is reportedly, “not essential to the user experience”. The company made the announcement via a blog post that these and future changes will bring Firefox users enhanced security, improved battery life, faster page load, and better browser responsiveness.

Mozilla’s browser will require click-to-activate approval from users before a website activates the Flash plugin for any content. Firefox will continue to block specific Flash content invisible to users as this is expected to reduce Flash crashes and hangs by up to 10 percent. To minimize website compatibility problems, the changes are initially limited to a short, curated list of Flash content that can be replaced with HTML.

The main goal is to push as many sites as possible to HTML5. Firefox plans to drop support for all NPAPI plugins, except Flash, in March 2017. The next major Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release) release, also scheduled for March, will continue to support plugins such as Silverlight and Java until early 2018, for those users who need more time for their transition.