Chrome Now Pauses Flash Animations

What changed yesterday

Chrome 45, released yesterday, stops playing Flash content that it judges not to be central to the page. The animation sits still, with a play button, until the visitor clicks it.

Google's reason is power. Animated banners and moving decorations use the computer's processor, and a laptop's battery, even when nobody is watching them. Content the page is built around, such as a video someone came to see, keeps playing.

Chrome updates itself, so the change reaches most of its users over the coming days without anyone choosing it.

For a site whose Flash header or slideshow loads from another address, such as a designer's server, many computer visitors will now see a still panel where the movement used to be.

What tends to be paused

Chrome judges by two things: where the Flash file comes from, and how big it is. Flash from the same website as the page keeps playing, and so does anything about 400 by 300 pixels or larger.

Smaller pieces loaded from another website stop.

• Animated headers still loading from a designer's server.
• Flash slideshows embedded from a photo service.
• Widgets and virtual tours supplied by another company.
• Flash banner ads served from an ad network.

The last is the one that reaches beyond your own site. If you run display ads built in Flash, many will now sit still on other people's pages.

AdWords converts eligible Flash ads to HTML5 automatically, but not every ad qualifies, so it is worth checking each display campaign.

What visitors see instead

To a visitor, a paused header looks like a still image or an empty grey panel with a play button in the middle. Few people think to click play on a header. Many assume something failed to load.

If the animation carried information, such as dates, prices or a phone number, that information is now hidden until someone clicks.

Phones have never shown Flash at all, so phone visitors already see an empty space. Yesterday's change brings a similar result to many people on computers.

Old plugins are gone from Chrome

Chrome 45 made a second change at the same time. Older plugins such as Java and Silverlight, switched off by default since April, can no longer be switched back on.

Flash is built into Chrome, so it is not affected by that change. But a virtual tour that runs in Java, or a video player built on Silverlight, no longer works in Chrome at all.

Other browsers

Chrome is not the only browser holding Flash back. Safari on Macs has paused some plugin content for a couple of years, and plenty of office computers have no Flash installed at all.

Firefox and Internet Explorer still play Flash where it is installed. But the share of visitors who see your animation as it was designed is shrinking from every side.

Why it is time to replace it

Flash was already invisible on phones and on office computers where it was never installed. Where it loads from another website, it now pauses for many of the remaining visitors as well.

Text inside a Flash file is hard for search engines to read, and changing it usually needs the original source file and the software that made it. Plain text on the page has neither problem.

Everything Flash once did on a small business site, from slideshows to animation to video, can now be done with ordinary page code, images and video files, and it works on every phone.

A worked example

A haunted house attraction runs each October in a rented warehouse on the edge of a suburb, with timed tickets, a gentler early show for younger visitors and a crew of volunteer actors.

Its website was built around a Flash header from 2009: a door creaking open over the logo, with fog drifting across the season's dates and ticket prices.

Each summer the original designer updated the dates inside it for a fee, and the file still loaded from the designer's own server. Phones had never shown it; the space at the top of the page was simply empty.

Last night a volunteer looked at the site in Chrome on her laptop and found a still grey panel with a play button where the door should be, and no dates anywhere on the page.

Within the hour, the dates, times and prices went into ordinary text beneath the panel.

The header itself is being rebuilt next week, a month before opening: a photograph of the real entrance, with a short silent video of the fog.

What replaces each piece

An animated header becomes a strong still photograph, or movement made with the page's own styling code, which phones handle well.

A Flash slideshow becomes an ordinary slideshow built into the page, or simply three or four good photographs.

Video in a Flash player moves to a standard video player or an embedded YouTube video. Flash ads become HTML5 or plain image ads.

And any words, dates or prices that lived inside the animation move into the text of the page, where everyone can read them and anyone can edit them.

Finding Flash on your site

Open each page of the site in Chrome on a computer and look for play buttons, still panels and empty boxes where something used to move.

Right-click anything suspicious. If the menu includes an item about Adobe Flash Player, that element is Flash. Then check the same pages on a phone, where every Flash element shows as a gap.

Whoever maintains the site can also search its files for the .swf files that hold Flash content, which finds pieces tucked away on pages nobody visits.

The counter-case

Flash served from your own website keeps playing in Chrome, as does a large game or main video. Visitors using other browsers see no change this week.

A purely decorative animation with nothing written in it costs little when it pauses. It still shows as a gap on every phone, though.

Move anything written inside Flash into the page today, and replace the Flash pieces themselves before the season they matter most.

The order to do it in

1. Open your site in Chrome on a computer.
2. Look for play buttons where movement used to be.
3. Check the same pages on a phone.
4. Move dates and prices out of Flash into text.
5. Find the original source files if they exist.
6. Replace each piece with images, video or page code.
7. Check your display ads for Flash versions.

Step four is the one to do today. A paused animation is an inconvenience, but dates and prices hidden behind a play button are information most visitors will never see.

Video still playing through an old Flash player is covered in YouTube has moved on from Flash video.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.