Flash?

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  • Dave2002
    Full Member
    • Dec 2010
    • 18034

    Flash?

    I have noticed with my Macbook Pro that it gets hot whenever I look at a site which uses Adobe Flash. This can be checked quite easily using the ActivityMonitor - which shows much higher CPU use when browsers are used to look at sites using Flash. This even happens on the for3 forum site, if a thread with a lot of YouTube videos is activated. It is possible to set Quicktime as an alternative for some YouTube situations - though whether this is significantly better I don't know yet.

    HTML5 should be able to do most of the same things, and hopefully better, but that doesn't mean that all web site developers will use HTML5 instead of Flash.

    Apple - led by Steve Jobs - has consistently held that Flash caused problems, and has refused to incorporate it into their OS.

    Some PC "experts" (real or self appointed) have also held that it is not a particularly good tool to have on all the time, and causes problems with frequent updates.

    As a result of this thinking I have blocked the use of Flash in my browsers, but there are still sites which I'd like to see which use Flash, and now I have to decide each time I visit such a site whether to enable it or not. Despite blocking Flash routinely, note that this does not necessarily also block pop up adverts.

    Some writers on the impact of the demise of Win XP have also advocated removing other Adobe products, such as Adobe Reader, which it has been claimed present security risks, though whether this really does lead to fewer problems I'm not sure. Sumatra PDF has been suggested as an alternative - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatra_PDF though this is a Windows only application.

    I now hardly use Windows of any variety at all - but I really do wonder whether there are satisfactory alternatives to Flash which will work over the common platforms today. It's all very well writing that it's not good, but without a sensible alternatives this does not seem to be as helpful as it could be.
  • Russ

    #2
    Flash is dying, but slowly. I don't think it's ever been 'native' to a Mac OS, which is why your CPU is working hard. Chrome on a PC translates flash videos, even Youtube, into a pseudo-html5 format, but I'm not sure whether this is the case for Chrome on a Mac. Worth trying Chrome to see if it makes a difference to your activity monitor?

    Russ

    P.S. On a PC, my favoured pdf reader is Foxit. It's very small compared to the insecure bloat of Adobe.

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    • Bryn
      Banned
      • Mar 2007
      • 24688

      #3
      So, how does one access the iPlayer's on demand ('Listen Again') Radio 3 HD Sound facility without Flash? My understanding is that the AAC-LC codec is wrapped in an Adobe FLV container. Is there and alternative HD Sound format available on the iPlayer for on demand listening?

      Comment

      • Dave2002
        Full Member
        • Dec 2010
        • 18034

        #4
        Originally posted by Bryn View Post
        So, how does one access the iPlayer's on demand ('Listen Again') Radio 3 HD Sound facility without Flash? My understanding is that the AAC-LC codec is wrapped in an Adobe FLV container. Is there an alternative HD Sound format available on the iPlayer for on demand listening?
        Just checked the RadioPlayer in Firefox - doesn't work if the Flash plugin isn't enabled - and cuts out if the plugin is disabled having established the link. I don't know about any other ways. Seems also to be the same for the iPlayer and video.

        I think it's needed for Safari also.

        At least with Firefox I can decide when to have Flash enabled.

        Comment

        • Lento
          Full Member
          • Jan 2014
          • 646

          #5
          I recently had problems with Chrome which, it seems, were caused by an installed version of Flash not getting on with Chrome's own inbuilt version. Once I learned how to disable one of them in Chrome, the issue seemed to go away.

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