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Comment by code_duck | Hacker News Reader

Browsing on iOS made me finally realize how unimportant Flash is to me. I've since disabled it on every computer I use.

I actually had the reverse chronology. I discovered how using ClickToFlash gave me significantly better battery life on my MBP, along with faster page loads and zero mysterious pinwheels. ClickToFlash has a better price-performance ratio than upgrading to an SSD – and I love my SSD.

So when I got an iPad, I was especially mystified at why anyone should complain about this garbage being missing.

edit: Useful links.

Go grab ClickToFlash (Safari, OS X):

http://clicktoflash.com/

Or the Safari extension for Mac or Windows:

http://hoyois.github.com/safariextensions/clicktoflash/

Or the Firefox equivalent:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/

rentzsch's clicktoflash is actually considerably out of date at this point.

The new, Safari-extensionized version that is mentioned second is much better and updated frequently. (this link: http://hoyois.github.com/safariextensions/clicktoflash/)

(mathematical stickler: seeing as ClickToFlash is free, it's price/performance ratio is always zero)

Haw, quite so. Still, even if the SSD were given to you for free, and we measured cost in installation time, the cost in time to install each one versus the resulting gains would be tremendously in favor of ClickToFlash, so awful is Flash.

Don't forget FlashControl for Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mfidmkgnfgnkihnj...

I prefer enabling Click-to-play in about:flags.

Click-to-play doesn't let you disable it temporarily, which is a problem for some sites that rely on background Flash files. On Chrome, I prefer https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gofhjkjmkpinhpoi...

I'm not sure I understand your meaning. Using just click to play in about:flags, on a page with blocked plugins you can click the icon which appears next to the bookmark star and select "Run all plug-ins this time". Is that not sufficient?

Ugh, I honestly hadn't noticed that. Maybe it wasn't enabled yet on the dev build or something.

Still, per-site whitelisting is nice.

For per-site whitelisting, you can click on that icon and check "always allow plugin on ..." or go to "settings > under the hood > content > plugins > manage exception."

It isn't the easiest or most intuitive way, but so far worked well enough to me.

I am not 100% sure if that extension is totally blocking the Flash files. Last time I checked it, it was only applying a "display: none" with CSS, and some files slipped past it, making it ineffective against 0-day exploits.

Yeah, I've been noticing something similar. Since upgrading my Android phone to 2.2, with Flash support, browsing the web got slower and clunkier. So many pages have flash advertisements on them, and the phone just doesn't have the horsepower to render them and stay responsive. I wonder if I can turn it off...

in the browser, go to settings, then click 'enable plug-ins' and choose 'on demand'. it will work like clicktoflash and show you a container with an icon wherever flash applets are on a page, which you can just tap on to start playing if you want to.

go to settings, enable plugins, on demand

I did it fairly early getting my android, it makes a big difference

Thanks, this is a great tip.

I just use noscript. No flash will load unless i tell it to, no javascript will load unless i allow it. It's like we first intended, i am the god of my browser. NONE SHALL PASS!

That's fine if you don't play flash games.

Agreed. What you lose is about 99% ads or games or overly complicated restaurant websites UI's. For cases where its like a Flash video player, i just click on the NoFlash/ClickToFlash placeholder rectangle, that then allows the actual Flash asset to load, and I partake of it. I've generally seen less freezes, crashes and memory use since switching to this approach.

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