Chrome with built-in Flash is available now

Every browser has its own ways of dealing with the inevitable Adobe Flash Technology. Inevitable? Becaues of its wide usage, can't just avoid it. Google Chrome, for example, decided to prevent crashing and other issues with Flash, by integrating it with the browser using an extension to NPAPI and has finally released a stable version of Chrome with built-in Flash support.

Chrome 5.0.375.86 is the stable version released a few days ago which brings the built-in support to the mainstream Chrome; earlier it was available in the testing and beta releases.

This platform independent NPAPI, Netscape Plug-in Application Programming Interface, is an effort to replace the old browser-plugin interface to improve security and performance.

Some of the annoying things about Adobe's Flash have always been the crashing issues, security issues, memory and cpu hog. Chrome tries to deal with it by giving it better integration with the browser. This will even ease out the critical security updates; Chrome will automatically take care of the plugin's update.

Mozilla on the other hand, have introduced the new Out of Proceess Plugins in the recently released Firefox 3.6.4 which runs such plugins in a separate thread, preventing it from freezing the browser in case of a crashes.

And everyone knows about Apple's refusal to use Adobe's Flash technology on their mobile devices.

With the recently changing web technologies after the introduction of HTML5  and CSS3, Adobe is trying hard to stay ahead with the release of Flash 10.1, whose notable features are added support for Hardware acceleration and mobiles, Android phones being the first to get Flash support. This clearly shows a tight bond between Google and Adobe, building a better support for both Chrome and Chrome OS.