Flash hell

[darkrezin]

I'm not sure if anyone else experiences this, but I get insane CPU usage during web browsing because of multiple Flash ads (in Firefox).

I eventually just gave up and disabled the Flash plugin - this does work pretty well... animated GIF ads usually replace the Flash ones, which don't kill the CPU.

However I'd like to know if there's a plugin/extension for Firefox that can enable/disable plugins for specific websites? It's obviously handy to have Flash working for certain sites like Youtube etc.

I'm posting here in desperation because I already did some searching and could find nothing that will do this

[darkrezin]

And that's why I posted here... seems to work well

Cheers stardust

[braincell]

Noscript is a pain but it does make you feel safer. I would recommend using two browsers and having noscript on one of them.

[nightscope]

a plugin/extension for Firefox that can enable/disable plugins for specific websites?(

Flashblock. Just click on the flash icon which replaces the actual flash animation in a page to activate flash. Otherwise it is off as default.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433

Another highly recommended addon is "UK Threat Level" which monitors the likelihood of a terrorist attack in UK. Present level is SEVERE.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... el&cat=all

So keep yer head down in crackney !!

ns

[darkrezin]

lol @ the terror threat plugin

flashblock looks interesting - will check that one out.

Cheers ns

[darkrezin]

Noscript is a pain but it does make you feel safer. I would recommend using two browsers and having noscript on one of them.

I can definitely see how it might be a pain but so far it doesn't seem that annoying. It's definitely useful to see all the various mad things going on on a page. We'll see in a few weeks though...

[kensuguro]

I used to work at a company that made those flash ads. Usually there is a standard to, and obviously you keep the cpu load to a minimal. The problem is when people get greedy and show multiple ads at once, when most ads were meant to be shown one by one.

If you ask me, they should just do away with all flash ads. All their cpm cpr madness is inflated fake statistics anyway. The whole internet ad industry runs on fake stats. It only flourishes because the effects are virtually untrackable.

[braincell]

A nasty vulnerability was found in Flash recently. The Flash player was patched after that but it made me and a lot of other people get noscripts.

[valis]

There's a few other reasons to run noscript, the fact that it automatically protects you against XSS (cross-site-scripting) attacks and a few ways of 'snooping' into another tab's data is a definite plus. Having to whitelist the sites you visit frequently is a minor annoyance.

I rarely see flash ads though even with noscript being disabled, they're blocked by my Adblock Plus subscriptions (ie, the block lists I subbed to).

Tack on Cookiesafe and you've got a fair amount of control over the most prevalent aspects of mainstream web browsing.

Since I actually have cookiesafe set to only reject external cookies (ie, ad tracking) I use CCleaner to clean up general cookie detrius, and you can whitelist cookies there as well (it tends to wipe everything out that's checked which is good, whitelisting cookies is under Options > Cookies). As a bonus it can also clean up most run type lists, scan your registry, clean browsing history & temp folders, wipe out custom folders (add your system temp drive as a custom folder), manage startup items (I like apps that let you 'disable' things that re-add themselves otherwise) and so on..

If you ask me, they should just do away with all flash ads. All their cpm cpr madness is inflated fake statistics anyway. The whole internet ad industry runs on fake stats. It only flourishes because the effects are virtually untrackable.

Funny, during the early days of the Eternal September web advertising was being touted as being the 'answer' to the 'fuzzy math' that radio/television/print advertising statistics have been based on since the dawn of their commercialization. In the early web days the numbers were actually quite clear, the problem was that noone knew why they needed a website (static page views on static html pages are easy to track when they number in the dozens or hundreds per day). Fast forward to now and the same 'fuzzy math' is present in the online world as well, makes you wonder if that's the fault of the medium or the commercialization...ok it doesn't really, the answer should be obvious: [insert middleman here]

[kensuguro]

Funny, during the early days of the Eternal September web advertising was being touted as being the 'answer' to the 'fuzzy math' that radio/television/print advertising statistics have been based on since the dawn of their commercialization. In the early web days the numbers were actually quite clear, the problem was that noone knew why they needed a website (static page views on static html pages are easy to track when they number in the dozens or hundreds per day). Fast forward to now and the same 'fuzzy math' is present in the online world as well, makes you wonder if that's the fault of the medium or the commercialization...ok it doesn't really, the answer should be obvious: [insert middleman here]

I think ultimately the problem is that the same people started running the internet ad industry. Came in with their funny math and silly talk. They're usually a strange bunch... people who are very weak with numbers, but extremely sensitive to performance stats. You know, the type that thinks everything travels in a linear trajectory because their mathematical imagination is limited.

[Neutron]

flashblock works for me. you have to click an extra time for flash you actually want to see.
now adobe has flash expect it to get more bloated and inefficient.

q6600 4gb
photoshop 4 load time 2 seconds
photoshop CS4 load time 75 seconds.

[darkrezin]

Yeah don't get me started on adobe.... I use some of their apps at my day job. Apart from the bloat, they are buggy, clunky in many essential operations and inexplicably inconsistent. I'm pretty sure the crazy CPU hit for Flash started around the time they took over.

[Neutron]

ok so i am not speaking about the fact that even the pdf reader foxit is faster and easier thna the acrobat one.

but even that has trouble with some of them because PDF alows people to get away with loading giant images and crappy formatting.
not pointing any fingers (motherboard manufacturers)

[valis]

I think ultimately the problem is that the same people started running the internet ad industry. Came in with their funny math and silly talk. They're usually a strange bunch... people who are very weak with numbers, but extremely sensitive to performance stats. You know, the type that thinks everything travels in a linear trajectory because their mathematical imagination is limited.

That was pretty much what I was suggesting, that the same middlemen from other industries inserted themselves into the web world over the last decade. These same mathematically-limited imaginations also have a hard time dealing with workflows that go beyond simple web browsing & using MS Office products. "Why can't you just cut & paste it to the website in a few minutes? I can export webpages from my copy of Word." etc...

[darkrezin]

Just a little update on this one - after a few months of using Noscript (pentium M internet laptop at home) and Flashblock (athlon64 at work in dire need of OS reinstall), the result is that Flashblock wins!

Noscript did indeed turn out to be extremely annoying... plays havoc when trying to purchase something online for example, and makes a lot of harmless sites really ugly/messed up/non-functional... there's also no easy way of fully disabling/enabling it on the fly without restarting Firefox - if there is one I couldn't find it. 'Allow top level sites by default' or whatever just didn't do it. I found myself starting IE to access some sites!

Flashblock just seems really really simple and great. It's actually more effective against advertising - with Noscript the flash ads usually turn into animated GIFs, which obviously isn't CPU-intensive, but it's still bloody annoying and distracting.

I think Noscript is only really useful if you are extreeeemely paranoid about all websites until proven otherwise, or if you simply surf a lot of 'dubious' sites.

[valis]

I'm not terribly paranoid, I keep noscript installed & activated as a plugin, but set to allow all sites normally. It's only when I wander out of my normal pathways that I re-enable it (it solves more than just scriping btw, it will trap cross-site scripting hacks as well for instance). I still find it useful when going places unknown via search engines and things like that. Free fonts, shareware repositories and even fortune 500 companies have had sql-injection compromises and other 'infections' so it isn't always just pr0n & juarez that you find problems with.

It's sort of like my anti-virus software. I can't actually recall ever having an actual infection on my machine, but my wife's pc has been infected and so have machines of friends (who bring USB drives over for instance) so having anti-virus I can reasonably trust still gives me that warm fuzzy feeling. Same with noscript.

I will agree, Flashblock is an effective way of dealing with what it addresses, so when it comes to doing just that I agree, it wins! (My wife's PC uses it because it's so damn old it freezes on sites like myspace under FF3).