Once regarded as a “key building block of the web”, Java has long served its purpose and, like Flash, its security vulnerabilities now make it more of a hindrance than a help. In Firefox, go to Tools, Add-ons, Plugins and select ‘Ask to Activate’ next to Shockwave Flash. Scroll down to Plug-ins, select ‘ Click to play’ and click Finished. To do this in Chrome, go to Settings, ‘ Show advanced settings’, Privacy and click ‘ Content settings’. Instead, you should disable the plug-in and choose whether or not to run it when you encounter Flash.

Sadly, as some sites still use Flash, including BBC News, if you remove it, you won’t be able to see certain content. You can test Shumway by installing the add-on and trying the demos at /shumway, which include rendering this fearsome tiger. YouTube recently announced that it was ditching Flash for HTML5, and Mozilla is developing a tool called Shumway that converts Flash content into HTML5. Add to this the well-known performance problems – such as Flash crashing and taking your browser with it – and it’s clear why you should opt out of this buggy old plug-in.Ī lot of web content that once used Flash, such as videos, games and animations, is now rendered in HTML5, which is built into all modern browsers.

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