To Flash or not to Flash, That is the Question

In a past blog post, I discussed the future of the Flash plugin. Since then, I have been paying closer attention to Flash in my browsers.



Have you ever had this problem? You reading a book or something with you laptop sitting on your desk with a few browser tabs open. Suddenly, your laptop starts making sounds like a 737 getting ready to taxi for take off. You take a quick look at Task Manager or Performance Meter and you see that one of your browsers has pegged the CPU utilization at 100%. The culprit? Usually some poorly written Flash ad.



I had thought this only happened on my Mac. But since I have been setting up a Windows 7 machine, the exact same thing has happened with Windows 7. So, what to do?



If you are using Firefox, you have a great option to fix the problem, FlashBlock. This addon blocks all Flash on your web page, and replaces with a small Flash icon. If you want to see the content, like a video for example, just click on the icon and it plays. This addon has really improved the performance of Firefox and my web browsing experience greatly. Finally an easy to use solution to protect you from poorly written Flash ads.



Update: I forgot to mention you can customize the toolbar and add a button that will turn Flash on and off on demand. FlashBlock is the best add on ever!  lol.