Flash Ads Are Broken | Hacker News Reader

Flash Ads Are Broken

flashadsarebroken.com

39 pointsjamesjyu19 comments

Actually I kind of hope people keep using flash for ads since it's so easy to avoid them by just not having it installed.

Yes, that may be the case for people who are savvy enough/willing to uninstall it. But for most people, this is not the case, and they're the ones who have to deal with the fallout.

I totally agree. I dread the day when animated ads move to html5. That's when I'm starting to use aggressive, indiscriminate ad blocking, something I haven't done so far out of consideration for ad funded sites I like.

I uninstalled Flash on my Mac about a week ago. Wanted to see if I could reduce the fan noise and heat. The one thing that might make me reinstall is that YouTube only supports 1 in 10 videos in html5, if that.

Did the same thing. There are extensions out there that convert from flash even if youtube doesn't offer the html5 version.

Chrome now has built in support for plugins block. If you're a chrome user, you should try it.

I use the youtube-dl python script for that; I love not having flash installed.

Try this if you use Safari

http://www.verticalforest.com/2010/06/09/youtube5-html5-conv...

I've had the system Flash uninstalled on my MacBook Pro for a couple of weeks now. In cases where I really do need Flash, I open the page in Chrome.

Chrome keeps its own version of Flash, and if you quit the browser once you're done with the Flash page the Flash processes won't hang around beating up your computer.

I too was getting tired of the fan noise, heat, and extreme CPU usage caused by Flash. While I was tempted to uninstall Flash, I thought I'd try Click to Flash (http://clicktoflash.com/) first.

I've been happy with Click to Flash and appreciate having the ability to turn it on when I have to have Flash (Google Analytics, Pingdom, YouTube, Slideshare.net, Vimeo, Pandora, etc). Unfortunately, I just don't think it's possible to run without Flash and still be able to achieve the productivity some of the prior mentioned Flash-enabled websites give me.

Nice idea but windowless flash are also more cpu consuming, so ads would use more cpu. I wonder what's the environmental impact of a change like this would be ;)

What's strange was that performance was my original thought when seeing that title, flash is breaking the web is so many ways.

I'm not sure it would change anything for Chrome though, the plugin in a process seems to use the windowless model by default. I'm not sure about that, but the rendering speed while doing my experimentations with http://swiffout.com seemed to suggest that.

Yeah, Flash is just broken in many ways :)

We have to weigh the performance impact against making sites simply unusable. I've seen so many times where I just can't click dropdown menus or lightbox content because Flash covers interfaces.

Or is it just that using Flash for ads is an abuse of the tool?

Recently i discover Chrome's Click-to-Play flash builtin feature (you can reach it in Preferences/Under the Hood/Content Settings/Plugins). It's similar to the ClickToFlash plugins for Safari: http://clicktoflash.com, but it's integrated in Chrome, you don't have to install anything to use it. Disable flash really enhanced my browsing experience: pages load faster, cpu usage down, more battery time ... If you want to see a specific flash object just click on it.

Too bad they removed the feature in Chromium 9 :( Instead you must block all sites and use a white list for site-wide exceptions.

This bothered me too, but you can re-enable it.

Put about:flags in the address bar, and at the bottom is an option for adding back the "click to play" setting.

Flash ads are the whole reason I use FlashBlock on Chrome. I don't mind seeing ads to support sites, but asking me to let Flash hog my CPU just to see your ad is more than I can do. Plus, jumping, animated, and ads that play sounds are more than obnoxious.

Also, it's amazing how HTML5 video can play smooth in HD on my netbook, yet Flash videos stutter and act like my computer is dying. All the more reason to wish Flash an early death.

In defense of this practice, it seems like the fact that ads force themselves above everything else is quite useful in preventing click fraud.

Wouldn't allowing the flash ads to have a non-window wmode make it would be much easier for malicious websites to trick visitors into clicking on ads that they weren't aware were there?

All ads are broken.

Every since I started using NoScript, the page loads faster than ever.

Has anyone here considered using an ad blocker instead?

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