Keep the Flashblocker extension enabled it'll prevent the "missing plugins warning" with the added benefit of giving a visual indication that a webpage uses flash incase you'd like to switch to a different browser. With the plugin.default_plugin_disabled set to false I'd miss out on embedded youtube videos (I can't find a youtube html5 converter for firefox)
One of the key points about Gruber’s article is that he actually wants the situation you are trying to avoid. Basically, he wants to see how many of his websites will present HTML5 based content if the website detects a missing Flash install. ClickToFlash (not sure about Flashblocker) pretends to be Flash, as far as most browser detection scripting is concerned. Otherwise, it wouldn't know there is Flash to be defered in the first place.
"We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. As of today, there are significant performance and battery life gains to be had by disabling Flash Player on Mac OS X."
No, we won't "cross that bridge". Colour me skeptic, but I've yet to see DF admit to any of the insufficiencies of HTML5 over Flash.
When confronted with contrarian proofs, the average Steve Jobs allegiant will cite other FUD grab-bags (ex: security issues, battery life, etc.). It's tiring to watch intelligent people pushing HTML5 based on fallacy after fallacy. Everyone wants HTML5 to evolve, but not by the hand of bullshit.
You're missing the point. I don't think anyone believes that HTML5 does everything Flash does. That said, for the things that people use Flash mostly for these days, such as video, audio, and animation, HTML5 does just fine.
What people like Gruber are reacting to is the craptastic Flash ads that permeate websites today, and the negative effect that they have on performance and battery life.
I've only missed the point if Gruber's points are agnostic. I know they aren't.
> video - kinda. The RTMP equivalent implementation isn't quiet as easy as RTMP.
> animation - this is the kind of bs I'm talking about. Having done complex timeline animation in Flash and JS (with WebWorkers) I can say with all honesty that it is not just fine with HTML5+JS. JS-based timeline animation is clunky at best and incredibly time consuming.
You're right, they don't. I'm still looking for where it is proven that a well-coded Flash site is inferior to a well-coded HTML5+JS site in terms of battery life.
No one can seem to give a tangible, legible reason why Flash has the unreasonably holy authority to drain battery power.
It's hard for me to compare HTML5 to Flash if the Flash version has a truckload of abilities being used that cannot be utilized in HTML5. What's so hard to understand about this?
Does the MacBook fan only come on for Flash? It seems unlikely. Seems like it might engage for CPU-intensive processes that contain audio, video, Internet access (WiFi or 3G isn't cheap on the battery) and a mixture of other features.
I'm not trying to get any one to agree to Flash being better. I just don't see an equal argument. Ever.
I read the article. I saw HTML5 mentioned as a fallback for YouTube videos. Which, um, works. I also saw discussion of ClickToFlash as an option for things you want to use and which don't have a non-Flash alternative. Which, um, is pretty darned sensible.
The concluding line -- "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it" -- is about the only position it's possible to have. Nobody knows what the future's going to look like, and sticking to something that really does have performance issues right now on the grounds that the replacement might become worse in the future is, well, not so sensible.
So maybe you should talk to your optometrist, because you're apparently seeing things that aren't there.
Possibly. But I know that you don't need a time machine to confirm whether or not advertisers will abuse HTML5+JS. You know they will.
With tongue in cheek, there is no advertisement="true" attribute on the canvas tag. If you were to block CANVAS or VIDEO you'd essentially be halting HTML5 progression. This concern, albeit not backed up with conjecture or reference, is that the use of CANVAS could actually cause some detriment to the HTML5 cause. Why shouldn't we anticipate this probability? Easy: we'll invariably end up with an answer we don't like and understand that an unfavorable result is to come.
The more "Flash is the cause of..." narratives I read, the more obvious it becomes. This fight isn't about standards at all. Flash-driven restaurant sites didn't suddenly become awful. They always were. And Adobe didn't make those sites. Shoddy developers did. iTunes for Windows runs like a fat kid; no one is banging down Microsoft's door about it.
When:
* Adobe Photoshop crashes, blame Adobe.
* iTunes runs like shit, blame Apple.
* a Flash-based site crashes your browser, blame the developer who built it.
Grooveshark is currently in the background, not playing anything. On my work PC, running XP, it doesn't use any cpu at all. On my personal mac, it constantly hovers at 45% core usage, meaning if I open grooveshark at home, my fans kick on in a 60 degree room.
If you were to block CANVAS or VIDEO you'd essentially be halting HTML5 progression.
With access to a decent selector engine, it's actually not that hard to selectively disable only the things which are (likely to be) ads. I've been doing that for years with nothing but CSS -- the fact that ads come in standardized formats actually makes it easier to put together selectors for them.
um, all he's saying is that we should wait for animated ads to show up in HTML5 and see what they are like before deciding how to disable them or even if it's required to do so.
[Flash] appears to under-perform on every platform I have except Windows (Windows in VMware + Flash is better than native Mac Flash, I swear!).
Flash has been an albatross for Mac users for a decade. It has performed terribly, crashed our browsers, and with the rise of YouTube &co. forced us to use it to watch videos via a hilarious, incredible, inefficient hack instead of a real native video player.
We are really (and understandably) happy to get rid of it, especially if that means we get to skip the worst kinds of ads and online videos don't churn the CPU anymore.
For all its usefulness, Flash just isn't worth the hassle for Mac users, and it's largely Adobe's fault that we find this to be the case.
Why is this blog even allowed on HN? Most of the posts submitted seem to be written by steve jobs himself, or whatever jobs wants to hear. Can anything come closer to an advertisement?
Funny thing is that since upgrading from a G1 to a G2 last week, I've gotten a definite sense that while Flash isn't end all be all, having Flash available makes the web experience more whole.
On my G1, browsing was a quick bit of text here and there; with the G2 I don't think twice when a site links to something like Vimeo. It just works. It's the web.
I can't understand intentionally taking that away from yourself.
Then choose any of the other embedded media scattered across the web that hasn't already catered to iOS.
Point is I don't have to shrug my shoulders and say "guess I can't check out this content because I'm on a mobile device" anymore. I don't have to think in terms of real web vs mobile web, which I was certainly doing before.
Then choose any of the other embedded media scattered
across the web that hasn't already catered to iOS.
The thing is that most of the cases where I may want to check something out is already made to work with iOS.
I guess we think differently of what "real web" is. For me it is built on HTTP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
For me, it's any content I may find interesting. I don't care what format it's presented in. You're making a technical distinction, I'm making a content-based one.
I have Flash on my Nexus One and it's disappointingly slow. I'm not sure what I expected from it, given that it appears to under-perform on every platform I have except Windows (Windows in VMware + Flash is better than native Mac Flash, I swear!).
It's not amazingly performant on my G2, but I haven't noticed any major slowdowns or the like. Then again, I've been pretty impressed with the performance of this phone in general; it just does not seem to suffer from performance lags at all. As somebody coming from a G1 that was on its last legs, it's been pretty awesome.
Unfortunately, there are features in the Flash version of YouTube player which aren't available in the HTML5 version, such as subtitles. I've watched several videos where I didn't get the joke because the subtitles were missing :p
flashy! is an AppleScript applet that makes the simple simpler by automatically enabling and disabling the Flash plug-in by moving the appropriate components from their normal directory, and placing them in a “.disabled” directory for safekeeping.
Interesting point about the future of the web. That's a horrible idea that HTML 5 will be able to run rampant in my backgrounded tabs - certainly an itch that needs scratching...
I think you need Perian installed to make the youtube html5 extension work. I tried getting rid of flash a few days ago, and youtube didn't work for me most of the time. I saw this post from Gruber again tonight, and then saw that the youtube html5 plugin noted that 480p is always encoded in flash (I forgot what codec it is). Installing Perian did the trick for me (so far anyway).
what's the best Click To Flash extension for Chrome?
the downside to hiding flash is that your brain no longer can feed on the ads that users are being exposed to - you don't know what the trends are, etc.
* go to about:config
* search on plugin.default_plugin_disabled.
* set to false