Flash No More
I guess I've just had a big string of annoying application issues recently, and now with Adobe Flash updating, I'm reminded of just how terrible this thing is.
On my latest install of Windows (7) on my gaming computer, I decided to see how long I could go without installing Flash. After installing the handy little YouTube HTML5 Switch add-on ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-html5-switch/ ), I've been pleasantly surprised at how well I can manage without it. Yes, there are a few little "hiccups" on some sites that need a tiny Flash widget to do something the browser isn't supposed to do. But, they usually have an alternate path to that feature (even if it's a little more work on my end).
I should also say that a few web sites that rely on Flash for advertisements have become much quicker to load. I no longer have to deal with goofy "multimedia" widgets making my browser slow to a crawl. Auto-play videos? WITH AUDIO? Gone.
Therefore, I feel it's important to bring people together to this cause:
http://occupyflash.org/
We need to all start disabling the Flash plugin in our browsers. Start there. See how you like it. If you find you can live without it (even if it's a little inconvenient), maybe you should think about just uninstalling it. If you work in a place that needs a lot of Flash junk, I would say start using your browsers' permission settings to disable plugins on all sites but the ones you use (if your browser can't do that, there are probably plugins that can).
I feel it's necessary to point out how critical this is: A lot of sites have little Flash version detection scripts. They use that information to make decisions on when they can drop support for old versions of Flash and embrace new features of the platform. If their detection is smart enough to tell them how many times it failed to even find a plugin, it might influence their choice to implement anything that the browser can't do natively.
And now, with decent (not great) browser support for viewing PDF files, I'm plugin-free on all my browsers! (I haven't allowed Java access to my browser in years.)
Bring on the HTML5. I'm done with outside programs poking holes in my most-used application's security and performance.