Jan. 2 (UPI) — Adobe Flash, an early online animation plugin, will no longer be supported by the company, and customers are urged to uninstall it, Adobe said.
The browser add-on that first appeared in 1996 reached the official “end of life” on Thursday, and Adobe will stop all videos and animations run by Flash Player starting on Jan. 12, the company said.
The early animation program was once the most popular tool to stream videos and play games online, but it was prone to hacks and other security problems and never made the transition to smart phones.
Three years ago, Adobe gave advance warning that Flash would be phased out.
“Adobe believes that there has been sufficient time for developers, designers, businesses, and other parties to migrate Flash content to new standards,” the company said.
Since 2017, companies like Google, Facebook and other large internet tech giants have been issuing video and streaming content with open web standards, which led to fewer prompts to run Flash on the sites.
Older sites on internet archives may still run Flash, but Adobe won’t support those applications, the company said.
Users waxed nostalgic on Twitter about early video games such as Fancy Pants, Snail Bob and Super Mario Bros that used early Flash technology.
“So many memories were made from it, and I will miss the games that helped make our childhoods,” tweeted @IBoy154.
