{"id":5815,"date":"2012-05-24T00:25:25","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T23:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=5815"},"modified":"2012-05-24T00:25:25","modified_gmt":"2012-05-23T23:25:25","slug":"adobe-flash-in-windows-8-metro-but-not-technically-a-plug-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/5815-adobe-flash-in-windows-8-metro-but-not-technically-a-plug-in.html","title":{"rendered":"Adobe Flash in Windows 8 Metro, but not technically a plug-in"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s Windows 8 rumour is that Adobe Flash will be baked into Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8, not only in the desktop edition but also in Metro.<\/p>\n<p>Until this is confirmed by Microsoft, it is only a rumour. However, it seems likely to me. The way this rumour mill works is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Some journalists and book authors working closely with Microsoft already have information on Windows 8 that is under non-disclosure. <\/li>\n<li>Some enthusiast sites obtain leaked builds of Windows 8 and poke around in them. Unlike new Mac OS X releases, Windows builds are near-impossible to keep secure because Microsoft needs to share them with hardware partners, and mysteriously copies turn up on on the Internet. <\/li>\n<li>When an interesting fact is leaked, this allows those journalists and book authors who already have the information to write about it, since most non-disclosure agreements allow reporting on what is already known from other sources. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That is my understanding, anyway. So when you <a href=\"http:\/\/winunleaked.tk\/showthread.php?51-Windows-8-Release-Preview&amp;p=2636&amp;viewfull=1#post2636\" target=\"_blank\">read<\/a> on WinUnleaked.tk that Flash is in IE10 you may be sceptical; but when Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera <a href=\"http:\/\/www.withinwindows.com\/2012\/05\/23\/windows-8-secrets-internet-explorer-10-will-ship-with-adobe-flash\/\" target=\"_blank\">report the same story<\/a> in more detail, you can probably believe it.<\/p>\n<p>Back to the main story: presuming this is accurate, Microsoft has received Flash source code from Adobe and integrated it into IE10, in a similar manner to what Google has done with Flash in Chrome. This means that Flash in IE10 is not quite a plug-in. However, on the Metro side the inclusion of Flash is apparently a compatibility feature:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>So, Microsoft has extended the <a href=\"http:\/\/iecvlist.microsoft.com\/ie10\/201205\/iecompatviewlist.xml\">Internet Explorer Compatibility View<\/a> list to include rules for popular Flash-based web sites that are known to meet certain criteria. That is, Flash is supported for only those popular but legacy web sites that need it. This feature is not broadly available for all sites.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>say Thurrott and Rivera, though I presume this only applies to the Metro IE10 rather than the desktop version.<\/p>\n<p>Does this make sense? Not altogether. Oddly, while I have heard plenty of criticism of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, I have not heard many objections to the lack of Flash in Metro IE. Since Apple does not support Flash on iOS, many sites already provide Flash-free content for tablet users. Further, on the x86 version of Windows 8 there is an easy route to Flash compatibility: just open the site in the desktop browser.<\/p>\n<p>That said, there is still plenty of Flash content out there and being able to view it in Windows 8 is welcome, especially if you can make your own edits to the compatibility list to get Flash content on less well-known sites. My guess is that Microsoft wants to support Flash for the same reason Android devices embraced it: a tick-box feature versus Apple iOS.<\/p>\n<p>One further thought: this is a sad moment for Silverlight, if Microsoft is supporting Flash but not Silverlight on the Metro side of Windows 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s Windows 8 rumour is that Adobe Flash will be baked into Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8, not only in the desktop edition but also in Metro. Until this is confirmed by Microsoft, it is only a rumour. However, it seems likely to me. The way this rumour mill works is: Some journalists and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/5815-adobe-flash-in-windows-8-metro-but-not-technically-a-plug-in.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Adobe Flash in Windows 8 Metro, but not technically a plug-in<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,34,55,77,95],"tags":[123,394,580,999],"class_list":["post-5815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adobe","category-flash","category-microsoft","category-silverlight","category-web-2","tag-adobe","tag-flash","tag-metro","tag-windows-8"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}