Next Flash Version Will Support Private Browsing 192
An anonymous reader writes "The world rolled its eyes when the problem of Flash cookies came to light several months ago. Even if you're careful about cookies or even if you use your browser's private surfing feature, sites can still track you through cookies stored by Flash. However, soon enough the next version of Flash, 10.1, will support private browsing and will integrate with browsers to turn it on when the browser itself is in private browsing mode. Browsers still store data during a private browser session, but they will delete it all at the end of the session. The same will be true of Flash private browsing."
Crontab to Delete Flash Cookies (Score:2, Interesting)
So I've been using this line in my crontab for a long time now without any problems (well no more problems than I usually experience with Flash under Linux):
* * * * * rm -fr /home/me/.macromedia
I think this solves the problem, but maybe I'm mistaken...?
Re:Remind me why (Score:5, Interesting)
However, with the advent of Flex (now Flashbuilder to confuse and confound more), there are many applications out there that legitimately store information on the client.
There has been a large mention of games already, but to that mix, I would add business software. There are many RIA's out there that manage data and distribution using Flex, and hence, pull a large amount of information from servers. Yes, sure, you could reload the data every time that you navigate away from a particular flash harness page, or you could store data within the shared object and not need to spend the vendor's bandwidth, nor stuff the client's pipe with information that was just sent a few minutes ago.
With the introduction of P2P channels in Flex 4, this opens up a whole range of possibilities to send data to a cluster of peers on a destination network, rather than clogging up outgoing pipes with information. There are a range of business cases for this technology.
That said, however, there is a need to curb the wild west attitude to data storage. There should be an option to default allow/deny/question whether Shared Objects should be allowed. Currently it is auto accept up to 100kb which falls outside of many legitimate applications anyway. Most importantly, there should be an option to always allow shared objects from a particular website.
We can't let the abuse of a technology proclude us from legitimate use when there are perfectly valid and reasonable strategies to manage and distinguish between positive and negative use cases.
Overreacting? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone explain me how can this be used against me if the cookies are stored in my personal computer?
Re:This doesn't really solve the problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
HTML5 is not an adequate response (Score:4, Interesting)
Does HTML5 provides for the same level of rich client platform development as Flash/Flex? With numerous widgets just like in Motif/MFC, just easier to use? (MXML just shines in GUI development, far beyond of what Motif/MFC/AWT/Swing offer).
Does HTML5 allows you to play video with some advertisement in a running text over it?
Does HTML5 protects your video site from hotlinking? I.E. can you make sure that nobody can embed your videos into their pages and make sales while you pay for the bandwidth?
Sorry, HTML5 'video', 'audio' tags and other dings and wistles... you have your place (probably on YouTube), but you ain't gonna replace Flash anytime soon. Especially not on commercial sites (like pr0n tubes), not for RCP development either. World needs a full-blown rich client platform for the browsers and so far Adobe has been the only one who were able to provide a cross-platform, browser-independent solution. And they did it quite well, despite of some quirks. Sun with JavaFX has failed... would you like MS to take over with their Windows-only Silverlight technology?
Re:HTML5 is not an adequate response (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure. HTML combined with CSS and Javascript / AJAX will do 80-90% of what Flash is used for.
No. XHTML5+CSS3+JS2+AJAX+DOM3+SVG+Video/Audio will not only do 100% of what Flash does. It will do more. Like being able to seamlessly embed everything that Flash does with the rest of the page.
And there is no reason why JavaScript can’t be as fast or faster than ActionScript. After all it’s pretty much the same language.
Here are some examples: http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/ [mozilla.com] (Try the movement tracker.)