@dave you might be right about 99.999999% of people not knowing how to install or where to look to find out how to uninstall flash. However, the same 99.999999% do not really even know what flash is, and the iphone / ipad users fall into that category as well. I am constantly being asked “why doesn’t this or that work on my iPad.” Sorry, but no flash for you is why.

As Werner said, “I think you hit the nail on the head – it’s not the technology that is problematic, its the people implementing it.”

This whole topic could be dissected for ever and ever, what about this or that or what if we do this or its because they do that…. With technology as available to the masses that it is today, it is no wonder that everyone thinks they are a designer or developer of some sort. Most of these same people use poorly designed WYSIWYG or other drag and drop programs to make their web pages and applications for them. This more often than not ends up with code that is a world of bugs and problems as well as extremely bloated.

And just to touch on flash in general (I am one of the people that feel flash should be used when applicable) My employees visit hundreds if not thousands of different websites every week, we have both Macs and PCs in our offices, our crashes / issues with Flash are virtually non existent.

I think the real problem we face is the uneducated public mass. “Buy a computer, install Norton AV, fire up IE and go to my favorite website!”…

@Greg – this is a great article. I hadn’t thought of the possible ramifications for ads being converted into canvas tags and javascript. Another thing users dangling from the Apple tree may not have contemplated is how the same immersive experiences currently created with Flash will be created using HTML5 without tools like Flash to make them with… There’s obviously been a need to create sites in Flash up until now, and banning the plugin on 1% of the worlds devices won’t suddenly remove peoples desire to be creative. Will it?

Ultimately the client (end user, not the peeps paying my agency) just want the whole experience to work. Why should the end user have to install/uninstall plugins or switch on or off javascript, or care or know what they are for that matter. Why should the end user even consider the tech?

Standards based.

I sympathize where you are coming from Greg, but really! Every time Adobe adds a layer of complexity to the software to get back to compliance a little bit of the Macromedia and Adobe fanboy I was dies inside lol!

Anyway, think you are doing a fab job – keep on!

I think you hit the nail on the head – it’s not the technology that is problematic, its the people implementing it.

The main reason why I use flash blockers is simply because 90% of ads are badly coded. They use massive amounts of memory (ie, loading a 2800×1600 background movieclip to pan around), and on linux just ONE flash app running will take up an entire cpu core.

One suggestion is that ad networks start employing some sort of CPU usage test for all ads. If adobe can provide some sort of benchmarking framework it might get the ball rolling…

Also, another suggestion I have: the core flash engine should have an option saying “Max allowed CPU usage”. If I had an option like that I would not bother with flash blockers

Does this make sense?

On any computer today, Flash is going to eat a significant amount of CPU (very often in the 30 % range as far as I am concerned) and crashes very, very, very often.

That is absolutely unacceptable and that is why so many people want to get rid of it (although Steve Jobs might have other motivations). The developers of the Flash technology built something which is powerful, but which is also, in software developers terms, a half baked technology (read ‘a complete piece of garbage’).