1381916 - Remove support for plugins (flash)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Plugins, enhancement)

Description

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Flash has been EOLed for quite a while now. It's time.

Comment 1

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Attachment: Bug 1381916 - Remove frontend support for plugins in Fennec

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158548/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158548/

Comment 2

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Attachment: Bug 1381916 - Remove support for plugins on Android

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158550/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158550/

Comment 4

[Nevin Chen(Not active on Bugzilla)]

Comment on attachment 8887664 [details]
Bug 1381916 - Remove frontend support for plugins in Fennec

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158548/#review164016

::: mobile/android/base/strings.xml.in
(Diff revision 1)
>    <string name="pref_clear_on_exit_summary2">&pref_clear_on_exit_summary2;</string>
>    <string name="pref_clear_on_exit_dialog_title">&pref_clear_on_exit_dialog_title;</string>
> -  <string name="pref_plugins">&pref_plugins;</string>
> -  <string name="pref_plugins_enabled">&pref_plugins_enabled;</string>
> -  <string name="pref_plugins_tap_to_play">&pref_plugins_tap_to_play2;</string>
> -  <string name="pref_plugins_disabled">&pref_plugins_disabled;</string>

I guess you also need to delete related code in cobocop test[1] since the string resources are gone?
e.g.
pref_plugins_tap_to_play
pref_plugins_disabled

[1]http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/tests/browser/robocop/src/org/mozilla/gecko/tests/StringHelper.java#404

Comment 5

[Nevin Chen(Not active on Bugzilla)]

I'm still doing a full build. Apparently artifact build won't work :)

Comment 6

[Nevin Chen(Not active on Bugzilla)]

I feel page loading after applying above patches becomes slowers but I don't see any bug.

Attached the log if it helps

07-19 16:40:13.209 D: onTabChanged: LOCATION_CHANGE
07-19 16:40:13.223 D: BrowserApp.onTabChanged: 2: LOCATION_CHANGE
07-19 16:40:17.652 I: [29185] WARNING: 'NS_FAILED(rv)', file /Users/nechen/Desktop/mozilla-central/dom/storage/SessionStorageManager.cpp, line 170
07-19 16:40:17.654 I: [29185] WARNING: 'NS_FAILED(rv)', file /Users/nechen/Desktop/mozilla-central/dom/storage/SessionStorageManager.cpp, line 170
07-19 16:40:35.555 I: --DOMWINDOW == 17 (0xb734a400) [pid = 29185] [serial = 23] [outer = 0x0] [url = https://www.playstation.com/country-selector/]
                      
                      
                      --------- beginning of system
07-19 16:40:37.329 D: onTabChanged: PAGE_SHOW
07-19 16:40:37.329 D: BrowserApp.onTabChanged: 2: PAGE_SHOW
07-19 16:40:37.333 D: onTabChanged: FAVICON
07-19 16:40:37.333 D: BrowserApp.onTabChanged: 2: FAVICON
07-19 16:40:37.386 I: zerdatime 368477970 - page load stop
07-19 16:40:37.386 D: onTabChanged: STOP
07-19 16:40:37.394 D: BrowserApp.onTabChanged: 2: STOP
07-19 16:40:41.850 W: Rebuilding visited link set...
07-19 16:40:43.290 D: onTabChanged: TITLE
07-19 16:40:43.294 D: BrowserApp.onTabChanged: 2: TITLE
07-19 16:40:43.593 W: [JavaScript Warning: "Content Security Policy: Directive ‘frame-src’ has been deprecated. Please use directive ‘child-src’ instead."]
07-19 16:40:45.323 I: int mozilla::AndroidBridge::GetScreenDepth()
07-19 16:40:45.642 D: onTabChanged: THUMBNAIL
07-19 16:40:45.642 D: BrowserApp.onTabChanged: 2: THUMBNAIL
07-19 16:40:55.591 I: --DOMWINDOW == 16 (0xb77e1800) [pid = 29185] [serial = 24] [outer = 0x0] [url = https://m.youtube.com/]
07-19 16:41:05.234 I: --DOMWINDOW == 15 (0xb5976000) [pid = 29185] [serial = 25] [outer = 0x0] [url = https://m.youtube.com/]

Comment 7

[Nevin Chen(Not active on Bugzilla)]

Comment on attachment 8887664 [details]
Bug 1381916 - Remove frontend support for plugins in Fennec

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158548/#review164052

I use this website to test Flash Player
http://game.slime.com.tw/
And I found that now Fennec will download that swf file and shows a notification.
Should we display a message to the user and let them know Flash is not supported instead of downloading it?
Maybe a toast or snackbar is enough.

Comment 8

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

(In reply to Nevin Chen [:nechen] from comment #4)
> 
> I guess you also need to delete related code in cobocop test[1] since the
> string resources are gone?
> e.g.
> pref_plugins_tap_to_play
> pref_plugins_disabled
> 
> [1]http://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/mobile/android/tests/browser/
> robocop/src/org/mozilla/gecko/tests/StringHelper.java#404

Yeah, I've also removed the testAdobeFlash.java test.

Comment 9

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

(In reply to Nevin Chen [:nechen] from comment #7)
> Comment on attachment 8887664 [details]
> Bug 1381916 - Remove frontend support for plugins in Fennec
> 
> https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158548/#review164052
> 
> I use this website to test Flash Player
> http://game.slime.com.tw/
> And I found that now Fennec will download that swf file and shows a
> notification.
> Should we display a message to the user and let them know Flash is not
> supported instead of downloading it?
> Maybe a toast or snackbar is enough.

That's the exact same thing desktop does when you don't have Flash, so I think the current behavior is probably fine. Most sites are not linking you to a swf directly, but embedding it in a page, so the download case should be fairly rare. Remember that the vast majority of users don't even have Flash installed, so this patch would not change anything for them.

Comment 10

[Benjamin Smedberg]

Comment on attachment 8887665 [details]
Bug 1381916 - Remove support for plugins on Android

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158550/#review164344

OMG I didn't realize quite how much code was going to go away here!

Comment 11

[Nicole Yee (:nicoleyee)]

Hey snorp,

Should i request some QA testing support on this? My gut is telling me that we should test this out to make sure the removal of this code doesn't cause any crashes, regressions, etc. but I will leave the decision up to you.

Comment 12

[Ioana Chiorean]

We (Fennec QA SV) are with our eyes on it. We'll start the tesplan here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/Fennec/Drop_Support_for_Plugins

Comment 13

[(inactive) Jim Chen [:jchen] [:darchons]]

Comment on attachment 8887665 [details]
Bug 1381916 - Remove support for plugins on Android

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/158550/#review164642

\o/

Comment 14

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

(In reply to Nicole Yee (:nicoleyee) from comment #11)
> Hey snorp,
> 
> Should i request some QA testing support on this? My gut is telling me that
> we should test this out to make sure the removal of this code doesn't cause
> any crashes, regressions, etc. but I will leave the decision up to you.

We don't need anything special. These changes don't touch anything but plugin paths, so I think the only thing that could really go wrong would be on desktop. I'd expect that to be caught quickly in automation or by Nightly users.

Comment 15

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

Given the flash removal does have user facing changes (such as removal of settings and showing a blank square when user encounters any flash content?), we should have this feature go through QA process like any other user facing features to make sure nothing is working unexpectedly.

btw, instead of showing a blank square or even downloading the flash content, can we not download anything and present a simple message saying flash is no longer supported so we keep users informed of what's happening instead of giving users the feeling of something's broken?

Comment 16

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I wouldn't recommend showing alternate UI (and we removed that alternate UI long ago). The vast majority of sites fall back properly, and so showing UI is likely to make the normal experience much worse.

Comment 17

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

@snorp: There's some unused code in Tab.java, too: https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/36f95aeb4c77f7cf3b3366583008cd6e4b6b1dba/mobile/android/base/java/org/mozilla/gecko/Tab.java#72

Comment 18

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

(In reply to Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo) from comment #15)
> btw, instead of showing a blank square or even downloading the flash
> content, can we not download anything and present a simple message saying
> flash is no longer supported so we keep users informed of what's happening
> instead of giving users the feeling of something's broken?

I don't think we need to do anything special. Removing this code and disabling Flash is giving the 0.5% of our users that were using Flash the same experience as the other 99.5%.

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/fdcbe846f697
Remove frontend support for plugins in Fennec r=nechen
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/af4be30c258b
Remove support for plugins on Android r=jchen,bsmedberg

Comment 20

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/fdcbe846f697
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/af4be30c258b

Comment 21

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Joni, can you help (or find someone who can help) modify what we say on SUMO about Flash support for FxA? For example,  https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-watch-flash-videos-firefox-android

Comment 22

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

Liz, Joni is not replying to needinfo on bugs. She said we should contact her on Slack.

Comment 23

[Andreas Bovens [:abovens]]

I've pinged Joni on Slack. Following up.

Comment 24

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Release Note Request (optional, but appreciated)
[Why is this notable]: This is something we should call out
[Affects Firefox for Android]: Only
[Suggested wording]: Removed support for NPAPI plug-ins such as Flash in Firefox for Android.  
[Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]: Android 4.0 was the last version of Android that shipped Flash Player on new phones. With the end of support for Firefox on Android 4.0 support for playing Flash has been removed bug 1316462. Context from Adobe at http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/06/flash-player-and-android-update.html their last update to Flash on Android was on September 10 2013 with versions Flash Player 11.1.111.73 for Android 2.x and 3.x and 11.1.115.81 for Android 4.0.x https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html

Comment 25

[Ioana Chiorean]

Verified as fixed on Fennec 56.0b13

Comment 26

[Gerry Chang [:gchang]]

Added to Fx56 release notes.

Comment 27

[Joni Chan]

We've added a note to the only Flash for mobile article we have: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-watch-flash-videos-firefox-android 

Please let me know if you see any other articles that need it.

Comment 28

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Can we be more explicit? Flash will not work in Firefox 56. I find the https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2017/07/25/firefox-roadmap-flash-end-life/ link confusing as it is describing the EOL of Flash on Desktop which is happening in 2020 where as the Android EOL was in 2013.

Comment 29

[Andreas Bovens [:abovens]]

I agree with Kevin.

The Mozilla support page should just list that Flash is no longer supported on Firefox for Android from version 56 onward. Optionally, we can link to http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2012/06/flash-player-and-android-update.html which was Adobe's 2012 Flash EOL announcement. There is no need to link to the recent announcement about EOLing Flash on desktop, IMO.

Additionally, all the content relating to click-to-play of Flash content, etc. on that page can all be removed, as it is no longer relevant.

Comment 30

[Kohei Yoshino]

Posted the site compatibility doc: https://www.fxsitecompat.com/en-CA/docs/2017/flash-plug-in-is-no-longer-supported-by-firefox-for-android/

Comment 31

[Chris Mills [:cmills]]

I have added a note to the Fx56 rel notes:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Releases/56#Plugins

I've also noted the bug number in the plugin roadmap/plugin roadmap highlights:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Plugins#Roadmap
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Plugins/Roadmap

Let me know if anything else is needed. Thanks!

Comment 32

[Joni Chan]

I've updated the messaging with a different link to the Adobe announcement. I've also included a note to state that the instructions are for 55 and older.