Microsoft will remove Adobe Flash from all its browsers by the end of 2020

In July 2017, Adobe announced that support for Flash would cease at the end of 2020. In a very short time, at the time, browser manufacturers individually announced the timing of dropping technology on their side and, among these, c it was also Microsoft that had, if necessary, released a roadmap with the various stages that would have led to the death of the language on the web.

The last stage included the following:

” By the end of 2020, we will be removing the ability to run Adobe Flash content on Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer on all supported versions of Microsoft Windows. Users will no longer be able to enable in some way Flash, or run content developed with it.”

During the weekend, Microsoft published a brief update in which it confirms that Flash will stop working on its browsers within the timeframe declared at the time. Starting from the end of December 2020, Flash content will not work both on Edge (based on EdgeHTML, the version currently available) and on Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft also specifies that these versions will not be updated for the whole of 2019, and until the date set from the timeline they will behave as they are today.

As far as the version of Edge based on Chromium is concerned, Microsoft will follow the same timing set by the team at the base of Chromium, which do not differ from those of the other Microsoft browsers. Also on the new Edge, Flash will be completely removed by December 2020, while in previous periods, it will be disabled but automatically activated for specific sites.

Over the last few years, Flash has been gradually abandoned more and more by web developers, especially after the advent of more modern, versatile, secure and efficient standards like HTML5. To date, the presence of Flash on browsers is mainly due to reasons of compatibility with old-style portals, which on many browsers should no longer work from the end of 2020.