Google is making good on its promise to strangle Adobe Flash’s ability to auto-play in Chrome.

The web giant has set September 1, 2015 as the date from which non-important Flash files will be click-to-play in the browser by default – effectively freezing out “many” Flash ads in the process.

Netizens can right-click over the security-challenged plugin and select “Run this” if they want to unfreeze an ad. Otherwise, the Flash files will remain suspended in a grey box, unable to cause any harm nor any annoyance.

Click-to-play … Run if you wish

Back in June, Google warned that, in cooperation with Adobe, it would change the way Flash material is shown on websites.

Basically, “essential” Flash content (such as embedded video players) are allowed to automatically run, while non-essential Flash content, much of that being advertisements, will be automatically paused.

Despite industry-wide calls for Flash’s demise, lots of major websites still use the aging browser plugin. And they won’t explain why.
By Jared Newman

This story on Adobe Flash was supposed to turn out a bit differently.

The idea was to talk with some of the biggest websites still using Adobe’s browser plugin, which has fallen out of favor within tech circles for its constant security issues and thirst for system resources. Maybe they could explain why Flash is still necessary, offering a counterpoint to the resounding calls to end its existence.

Instead, most of the proprietors of Flash-reliant websites I contacted didn’t want to talk at all. HBO, NBC, CBS, Zynga, King, Showtime, Pandora, and Spotify—all of which require Flash on their desktop sites—declined to comment. Major League Baseball, Slacker Radio, Hulu, and the BBC didn’t respond to inquiries.

Security, for instance, remains a major concern, with new exploits popping up on a regular basis. In one recent example, hackers were even able to break through the sandboxing that’s meant to minimize vulnerabilities in Google Chrome. Flash is also a notorious resource hog, which is a problem as laptops become thinner, lighter, and more reliant on power efficiency for long battery life.

All of this has brought calls to kill Flash to a fever pitch, not just on mobile devices, but everywhere.

These days, it is easier to browse the web Flash-free. Many sites have moved away from Flash for animations and graphics, and web browsers’ widespread adoption of digital-rights management for HTML5 has allowed major video and music sites to leave Flash Player behind. Netflix and YouTube both work without Flash, as do Google Play Music and Rdio. Amazon also started rolling out an HTML5 player last month.

Still, a mass exodus or firm cutoff for Flash would be easier said than done.

Despite the pressure from tech circles, the sites I spoke with said they simply weren’t able to start moving away from Flash until recently, when better technology become available. And even now, it’s going to take time for them to finish building the necessary tools.

While Denenberg says there’s not much reason to deploy a new Flash-based streaming solution at this point, iHeartRadio still needs time to make the transition from its existing platform

We tested the effects of browsing with and without Flash on several major browsers. Enabling Flash is, in a word, catastrophic.

n case you needed another reason to uninstall Adobe Flash, we’ve got one: It can drag down your PC by as much as 80 percent. Yes, 80 percent. So not only is Adobe Flash incredibly unsafe, it’s a memory hog. And we’ve got the numbers to prove it.

As part of an upcoming roundup of the major browsers, we tested their abilities to handle Flash. Two browsers, Mozilla Firefox and Opera, do not include Flash, although you can download a plugin from Adobe to enable it. A third, Microsoft’s new Edge browser, enables Flash by default, although you can manually turn it off. Both Internet Explorer 11 and Google’s Chrome also include Flash, which you can disable or adjust within the Settings menu.

Simply put, responsive design is the practice of creating a website that uses one code-base which automatically adjusts its interface to whichever device, operation system, screen orientation and resolution a user is on.

Responsive web design has emerged as an easier way for companies to present a unified front on all devices while limiting the amount of effort involved and the number of properties that need maintaining

There is price. And then there is value. No one will pay the price for your product or service unless they see value in it. So, how do you stand out among competitors and add value to your business?

The first step would be to listen to your prospects and understand their needs.

But what if the store is online? How do you study your prospects and customers then? How do you add value to their experience? This is where a website-visitor insights platform comes in. It’s not the same as website analysis, albeit a subset of it. While website analysis gives you data on where the traffic is coming from and which page has the most hits, visitor insights will give you information on the individuals who come to your site.

Here’s how you can use that data:

1. Find out what they’re interested in: Like in a shop, when a person visits your website for the first time, they can be looking for a particular product or just browsing. A real-time visitor insights platform will tell you which page visitors are viewing, what page they move on to and how long they stay on each page.

2. Identify issues: If a person is a repeat visitor—the software will tell you when and how many times they have visited before. You can see the history of their movements and identify possible reasons for not making a purchase.

3. Make them feel special: Everyone likes personalized service. One way of making your visitors feel special is to customize content based on their browsing history.

4. Targeted marketing: Know where your visitors are coming from. You can find out not just their geographical location, but also how they came to be on your page—were they directed here by a blog, or a Tweet, or a Facebook post? Or did they Google something that led them to your page? Is a significant percentage coming from a particular country or region?

How do you use this insight? Say, a lot of your visitors are from a region where the first language is not English. You could invest in hiring a salesperson fluent in that language. If a person comes to your website from Twitter, you can ask them to tweet about you and spread the word among their followers, or if Twitter is sending a lot of traffic your way, you may add a Twitter widget to your website—one that encourages visitors to tweet about your product. Targeted marketing will help you improve sales conversions.

KPCB’s Mary Meeker presents the 2015 Internet Trends report, 20 years after the inaugural “The Internet Report” was first published in 1995. Since then, the number of Internet users has risen from 35 million in 1995 to more than 2.8 billion today.

Millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce and their work / life expectations differ from previous generations. As connectivity and commerce continue to rise, we have witnessed broad impacts on consumer expectations, which in turn can alter work for many, to a form of work that can be flexible and supplemental. Looking internationally, Chinese Internet leaders continue to innovate, while India is on-track to become the second-largest Internet market in the world.

Mobile Isn’t Killing the Desktop Internet
http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2015/05/26/mobile-isnt-killing-the-desktop-internet/

People are increasingly accessing online content on mobile devices, but that doesn’t mean the desktop is in decline.

A theory sometimes bandied about the media industry says audiences are deserting desktops and “going mobile” instead. But actually, data from online measurement firms doesn’t seem to support that view, at least at the aggregate market level.

The share of overall consumption coming from mobile devices is growing, but desktop web usage isn’t dropping. In fact, it might be increasing.

“The key thing to remember is that percentages are not zero-sum,” said Tony Haile, CEO of online analytics firm Chartbeat. “You can have mobile growing to 50% of your traffic and desktop traffic remaining healthy.”

That understanding has important implications for media owners and marketers, who often say they’re altering their sites and strategies to cater for their growing mobile audiences. It makes sense to optimize for mobile if that’s a large and growing audience, but mobile isn’t the only game in town. In fact, it seems desktop Internet use is here to stay, for the time being at least.

Of Windows share their websites for currently 32.4 percent.
Unix servers run by 67.6 per cent.

W3Techsin statistics show that 52.5 percent of Unix servers run Linux. BSD, HP-UX, and Solaris share classes per cent or less, so is likely to rotate the majority of linux Of those sites, which W3Techs is unable to list.

Windows desktops position remains steadfast. Net Applications According to different versions of Windows are used for more than 90 per cent of personal computers. Mac OS has accounted for 6-7 per cent for a long time. Linux is still only one and a half per cent of computers.

Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2829:kaksi-kolmesta-nettisivusta-ajaa-unixia&catid=13&Itemid=101