The company has recently laid out their 2016 priorities for Edge browser, which include isolating Adobe Flash into a separate process and pause unnecessary content.
Once considered a gateway to the internet, Adobe Flash is facing a slow death as modern alternatives like HTML5 are taking its place.
Now Microsoft plans to put another nail in it coffin by putting Flash into a dusty corner.
With the decision to sandbox flash-applets in Edge, Microsoft takes an important step to improve the browser´s overall efficiency.
Crashing Flash elements will not longer be able to take down the whole browser and pausing their execution in the background will have a positive impact on CPU load and therefor also on battery consumption.
Microsoft is not the first major tech company to sideline Adobe Flash, since Steve Jobs heavily ridiculed the technology and refused to put it on iPhones. However, Microsoft's action makes the biggest impact now, since Internet Explorer continues to be the most widely used browser across the globe, and Internet Explorer is soon going to be replaced by Microsoft Edge. According to numbers from Netmarketshare, IE still has a browser market share of 46.9 percent.
Microsoft is finally following in the footsteps of Apple and Google, who have expressed their resentment for Flash already long ago. Apple stopped using Flash for its Mac OS X back in 2010, and Google Chrome continues to fight Flash by blocking Flash advertisements and persuading developers to utilize HTML5 instead.
Adobe itself is prepared for the imminent end of Flash, and has already renamed Flash Professional Suite to Adobe Animate. While the suite continues to provide tools for creating Flash animations, it supports also other standards.
Source: Microsoft
