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Comment by Mithaldu | Hacker News Reader

Short version: It's the process that runs extensions and plugins like flash.

Interestingly the solution to problems with it is the same as implemented in Opera 12 years ago: Configure the browser to run plugins only when the user explicitly activates them.

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Info on how to set "Click to Play" in chrome settings: https://security.berkeley.edu/content/how-do-i-enable-click-...

This is awesome. Flash isn't used for anything anymore, can't wait until this is the default.

Besides ads. And Google is first and foremost an advertising company. Don't hold your breath for that to become the default in Chrome.

And that's pretty much why Google built Google Web Designer[0] - because advertisers are going to want their media to run on all browsers, even ones without Flash.

[0] http://www.google.co.uk/webdesigner/

Google Flash ads are rare, and I'm sure they'd be happy to move away from them entirely in favor of HTML5 technologies.

And this is why we must treasure and keep Flash -- so we can easily block the kinds of people who use it.

Filtering out HTML5 video ads is harder (though if you block everything set to auto play you do OK).

#(though if you block everything set to auto play you do OK)

How do i do this on chrome?

I do all my rewriting with a proxy (in my case glimmer blocker, though I also had to implement my own man-in-the-middle SSL tool to make it work with https connections). I simply rewrite URLs, strip referrer tags, respond with empty files for domains I don't like, and rewrite pages to remove crud. It speeds up my browsing experience immensely and coincidentally improves my privacy somewhat.

I seems brain damaged to me to do it via a browser extension since I use multiple browsers, not to mention other programs that make http/https/ftp connections (e.g. RSS reader, mail reader etc).

It's still the only way to get write access to the clipboard, unfortunately.

In what browser is Flash still required? I've been doing:

    to_clipboard = (text) ->
        textarea = document.getElementById "copy-workaround"
        textarea.value = text
        textarea.select()
        document.execCommand "copy", false, null

In chrome for years.

That code doesn't work (at least in ordinary page scripts), as far as I can tell.

http://jsfiddle.net/vej6vbdt/

You're entirely right, after looking into it a bit, it seems it's blocked now in everything but content pages (which is where I use it)

Did this on my 2008 MacBook, still running Snow Leopard. The speed was immediately noticeable when browsing the web.

I'd recommend it if anyone else has noticed a slow down at all.

I gotta ask: why are you still running Snow Leopard?

I am not him, but on one older Mac, I am running Snow Leopard because it's the last OS X I can run on a 32bit computer.

And yes, I know, it has all the terrible ShellShock bugs and other stuff that will never be fixed, but I just need to run some OS X software time from time and I won't buy a new Mac because of that.

And when I tried to install Linux on that, Wi-fi didn't work properly, and there were some other issues I had with I think rebooting and maybe some other hardware stuff (I know, it sounds like a cliche, but it's true)

I don't feel there are any real benefits in upgrading. It'll just slow down my MacBook even more.

Thanks for the honest reply. I wasn't trying to be judgemental, just trying to understand specific reasons, rather than admit the nebulous cloud of "because".

I still run Tiger on a PowerBook G4.

I did the setting changes. Now the process monitor on my MBP (Yosemite) shows a bunch of "Google Chrome Helper" not responding in red. Not sure this has saved battery but seems battery goes out even quicker.

I've had "Click to Flash" turned on in Chrome for a while - I found running flash by default was having a measurable impact on my battery life. Turning it off makes Chrome more responsive and nets me an (anecdotal) increase in longevity when I'm away from the charger.

Flashblock on Firefox does the same thing, and I run with it rather than AdBlocker. Blocking flash removes the most painful advertising, leaving more appropriate, less in-your-face advertising as a sort of compromise for the vendors. The 'net is noticably louder when I go onto a machine without flash being blocked.

Stopping rollover ads is worth it alone. Does stopping ads in this way prevent ad revenue?

You don't need Flashblock to do that. Firefox itself allows you to set plugins to "click to play".

Opera implemented click to play because, unlike Microsoft and Netscape, they couldn't afford to pay the patent troll with the auto-play patent.

That is actually a different behavior. In Opera you have to click on a flash applet to activate it even when it's loaded automatically. The click-to-play thing however makes it so a placeholder is displayed until you click, and only then the download and integration of the applet is started. It's even configurable per site, and explicitly meant to save CPU and bandwidth.

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