

Flash Ads Are Broken - jamesjyu
http://www.flashadsarebroken.com/

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technomancy
Actually I kind of hope people keep using flash for ads since it's so easy to
avoid them by just not having it installed.

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fauigerzigerk
I totally agree. I dread the day when animated ads move to html5. That's when
I'm starting to use aggressive, indiscriminate ad blocking, something I
haven't done so far out of consideration for ad funded sites I like.

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melling
I uninstalled Flash on my Mac about a week ago. Wanted to see if I could
reduce the fan noise and heat. The one thing that might make me reinstall is
that YouTube only supports 1 in 10 videos in html5, if that.

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riobard
Try this if you use Safari

[http://www.verticalforest.com/2010/06/09/youtube5-html5-conv...](http://www.verticalforest.com/2010/06/09/youtube5-html5-converter-
for-youtube-videos/)

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ecaradec
Nice idea but windowless flash are also more cpu consuming, so ads would use
more cpu. I wonder what's the environmental impact of a change like this would
be ;)

What's strange was that performance was my original thought when seeing that
title, flash is breaking the web is so many ways.

I'm not sure it would change anything for Chrome though, the plugin in a
process seems to use the windowless model by default. I'm not sure about that,
but the rendering speed while doing my experimentations with
<http://swiffout.com> seemed to suggest that.

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jamesjyu
Yeah, Flash is just broken in many ways :)

We have to weigh the performance impact against making sites simply unusable.
I've seen so many times where I just can't click dropdown menus or lightbox
content because Flash covers interfaces.

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Xuzz
Or is it just that using Flash for ads is an abuse of the tool?

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lamnk
Recently i discover Chrome's Click-to-Play flash builtin feature (you can
reach it in Preferences/Under the Hood/Content Settings/Plugins). It's similar
to the ClickToFlash plugins for Safari: <http://clicktoflash.com>, but it's
integrated in Chrome, you don't have to install anything to use it. Disable
flash really enhanced my browsing experience: pages load faster, cpu usage
down, more battery time ... If you want to see a specific flash object just
click on it.

Too bad they removed the feature in Chromium 9 :( Instead you must block all
sites and use a white list for site-wide exceptions.

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ndaiger
This bothered me too, but you can re-enable it.

Put about:flags in the address bar, and at the bottom is an option for adding
back the "click to play" setting.

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maguay
Flash ads are the whole reason I use FlashBlock on Chrome. I don't mind seeing
ads to support sites, but asking me to let Flash hog my CPU just to see your
ad is more than I can do. Plus, jumping, animated, and ads that play sounds
are more than obnoxious.

Also, it's amazing how HTML5 video can play smooth in HD on my netbook, yet
Flash videos stutter and act like my computer is dying. All the more reason to
wish Flash an early death.

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willscott
In defense of this practice, it seems like the fact that ads force themselves
above everything else is quite useful in preventing click fraud.

Wouldn't allowing the flash ads to have a non-window wmode make it would be
much easier for malicious websites to trick visitors into clicking on ads that
they weren't aware were there?

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est
All ads are broken.

Every since I started using NoScript, the page loads faster than ever.

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radley
Has anyone here considered using an ad blocker instead?

