14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 8 comes with a major change in the way Internet Explorer 10 handles Flash websites, in an attempt to keep users on the safe side when it comes to vulnerabilities discovered in Flash software.
While this type of content still works on Windows 8’s Modern UI and Windows RT, Microsoft needs to manually approve every single Flash website before users can load it. The information is then placed in a whitelist that’s constantly updated and that instructs Internet Explorer 10 on whether to load the page or not.
And even though this may sound like a major setback for some users, Microsoft is reportedly moving very quickly to approve new websites for Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.
According to ZDNet.com, there are more than 4,300 Flash domains included in the whitelist, with the company adding another 1,000 each month.
The good news is that software developers have managed to find a way to manually add websites to this list, even though some past Windows 8 updates had blocked the changes.
But on Surface RT and other Windows RT tablets, adding Flash websites to the whitelist has become a common practice, especially because users want to access this kind of content using their devices.
Easy to use downloadable applications have also been developed in this regard, allowing users to edit the list in just a couple of minutes.
The procedure usually involves clearing the browser history and adding new websites to the whitelist stored in a hard-to-reach folder on your computer. The downside is that users who choose to edit the file need to disable future updates, so Microsoft’s updated whitelist won’t be delivered to their computers.
A short guide on how to enable Flash websites on a Windows 8 device is available here. An alternative tutorial on how to do this with a registry hack is here.
Click here to view the latest version of Microsoft’s own whitelist in your browser.