IE10 bids farewell to Flash

First Apple snubbed Flash, now Microsoft. Flash has now been effectively banned in Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8, specifically the Metro version of IE10.

Speaking at the Microsoft BUILD conference, IE team leader Dean Hachamovitch said:

Running Metro-style IE plug-in free improves battery life as well as security, reliability, and privacy for consumers. Plug-ins were important early on in the Web’s history. But the Web has come a long way since then with HTML5. Providing compatibility with legacy plug-in technologies would detract from, rather than improve, the consumer experience of browsing in the Metro-style UI.

This echoes almost exactly the letter which Apple’s former CEO Steve Jobs released in 2010 explaining the reasons that iOS would never support Flash.

One of Window 8’s core functions will be to deliver a more unified OS for both tablets and standard computers. “The experience that plug-ins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 Web. The reality today is that sites are already rapidly engineering for a plug-in free experience,” says president of Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Live Division Steven Sinofsky.

Those who are still keen on plug-ins will have to stick with the vanilla desktop version of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7. It will support Flash, as well as previous plug-ins from legacy version of the browser.

Despite Microsoft and Apple snubbing Flash, the software remains an important tool for Adobe, thanks to the slew of Flash-based apps and gaming titles which populate the Android store in particular.

Additionally, Flash 11 will support 3D graphics and 64-bit architecture; this will hopefully place Adobe back into the hearts and minds of developers and customers alike.