Tech: Flash Player gone

Subject: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Thompson
Date: 23 Dec 21 - 11:11 AM

Flash Player has now been discontinued, and it seems impossible to play some historic recordings, including the British Library's entire online collection of recordings of accents in English (some of them recorded from World War I prisoners of war). Is there any solution?

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: DaveRo
Date: 23 Dec 21 - 12:20 PM

It plays here, in Firefox, and I don't have Flash.

What browser are you using?

The page appears to detect whether you have Flash and if not fallback to another method. Maybe it's falsely determined that you do have Flash, but no longer serves it.

Does this site think you have Flash?
http://browserspy.dk/flash.php
If so, find and uninstall it.

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Tangledwood
Date: 23 Dec 21 - 06:01 PM

It appears that VLC player will play flash but requires some work-arounds. It may be worthwhile if you have a lot of files that are important to you.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/54379/vlc-for-flash-video#54385

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Dec 21 - 07:43 PM

Use Daum PotPlayer

It will play anything I throw at it and has a very easy GUI (easy to use)

It does FLV easily and all sound & video files. (at least on PCs..I don't know it there's a Mac version.)

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: DaveRo
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 03:43 AM

I don't think the OP is trying to play downloadable flash files (though members of BL can apparantly download these sound clips). The problem, I assume, is playing the clip on the webpage given in the OP - or similar pages on the BL site.

I'm now using Firefox on Android, and the sound clip doesn't play. I can see the waveform, but when I tap the play button nothing happens.

The reason turns out to be that this Firefox is using uBlock Origin as adblocker. If I disable uBO (on this site only) the sound plays. Firefox on my desktop uses AdBlock Plus, a different adblocker.

Flash isn't mentioned on the site I see in Firefox. I suspect you only see it on an old system, which does not support modern audio media.

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Thompson
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 03:53 AM

Ah, interesting! Thanks, DaveRo. I opened Firefox (having tried Brave and Chrome without success) and it offered me a chance to 'refresh' it, to which I said no, and then the clips played!

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: DaveRo
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 04:15 AM

Firefox will offer a refresh if it has not been used for a long while. You probably have an old version which may be insecure - which doesn't matter much if you only use it for this site.

Brave is a modern browser, it ought to work. I wonder if it's blocking the audio file like uBlock Origin did here? If you normally use Brave it might be worth checking if it blocks large media files for some reason.

No idea about Chrome.

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 07:55 AM

I've managed to play the file with Firefox, Chromium and Opera on this Linux PC. None of these browsers have Flash installed. Firefox needed AdBlocker Ultimate disabling. The other 2 browsers don't have an ad blocker installed.

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: DaveRo
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 11:28 AM

At the bottom of the webpage is a link: "View full metadata for this item"*. Among other things, that lists the formats in which the sound clip is available: wav, wma, and mp3.

In my case it downloads and plays it the mp3. The downloaded file is quite big - 2.1MB - and I think that's what uBlock Origin on my tablet objected to.

That metadata file was the same 10 years ago. I suspect flash was once used to control the playback, add notes, and the like. That's all done with javascript these days; they ought to remove all reference to it.

*Depending on your browser, you may or may not be able to read the XML file.

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Malcolm Storey
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 12:41 PM

It seems the further forward the technology "progresses" the further back you need to go.

I do bugger all important on Windows 10 (the worst version so far) and spend a fair bit of time ensuring no "updates" happen.

Hey Ho

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 03:00 PM

I for one am very glad to have Flash gone. It has been a dinosaur for years yet my computer would still ask if I wanted to download an update. (I never did.) Perhaps it will finally stop that.

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: Thompson
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 03:03 PM

Hm. It wouldn't download for me either.
Yeah, ancient version of Firefox.
I probably have ad blockers on Brave and Chrome ok. They don't stop me using YouTube or various other media sites.

Subject: RE: Tech: Flash Player gone
From: DaveRo
Date: 24 Dec 21 - 04:57 PM

Thompson wrote: I probably have ad blockers on Brave and Chrome ok. They don't stop me using YouTube or various other media sites.

The difference is that this site downloads the whole file, all 2MB of it, and then plays it - in Firefox anyway. YouTube and similar stream media files - download it in small sections as it plays.

I suppose the BL do that because the sound clips are short and of low quality.

I found that uBlock Origin on Android blocks by default media files greater than 50KB; I can change the limit by website. I expect other ad-blockers do the same, though I'm not sure why.

My guess is that if the site blames Flash for not playing then you do have Flash installed.