Flash player

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I’m not sure that this is the right place to ask this question, but why exactly do I need Flash Player? For the umpteenth time in the last couple of years Adobe has updated it. If it’s that insecure then why don’t they scrap the code and start over from the beginng. I understand Apple doesn’t use it, there has to be some reason for that. If it’s just to facilitate advertisers, and play little video clips posted by people with smart phones, most of which are C**p, then I can live without it.

The reason I’ve been moved to ask is that yet again this morning, without so much as asking, Adobe Flash was updated. Right after that I started seeing pop-up ads in front of what I was trying to read. This was on the BBC Website, not some fly-by-night site of doubtful provenance. There was a Close button, but clicking on it made the pop-up bigger, obscuring even more of the page. Click Close again and it went back to the original size, still in front of the text, but close? No way. I suspected Flash Player because when I right-clicked in the pop-up and selected Properties I found a dialog box for setting Flash options, a ridiculously complicated page with a range of setting that only an Adobe expert would know how to use.

I have flushed Flash. Some, minor, elements of Web pages aren’t loading, all advertisments as far as I can see. I don’t watch Utube videos, don’t use Facebook or Twitter. Can anyone suggest a good reason for re-installing Flash?

David

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Hi David,
without going into any discussion about ‘Flash’, I use No Script addon in FF then it only runs if I allow it to.

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This link should explain what is flash;https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer.html
This link will show you what you should do to install it;https://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/why-you-should-care-about-automatic-updates-for-flash-player/4695
If you are running Interent Explorer here is an ad blocker program;http://simple-adblock.com/ Scroll all the way down for IE9.
Of course if your running FF go to the website for the same.

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If you cannot come up with a good or compelling reason to use flash then I cannot either.

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Without flash player you cannot watch youtube and your life will be over – oh, you don’t watch youtube. Obviously don’t have a life then.

cheers, Paul

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Try browsing without Flash and see how things go. If you find there are sites that have content you wish to see that require it, then there is your answer. If not then you also have your answer.

The BBC site is question is obviously allowing this to happen on their site. Perhaps you should be discussing this with them as well. Generally these are advertisers paying for ads. As chowur states there are ad blocking apps that work pretty well. I have also used AdBlockPlus.

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Yes, what they all said, and the reason Apple doesn’t use it was because of a long-standing war AND flash is hard on devices with limited resources, especially when smart phones and touch devices first came out. They’ve since gotten much more powerful, but its still somewhat difficult and there’s still the war.

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Seems like Apple has been in these kind of wars with many others recently.

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Thank you all for your inputs. Clearly I don’t have a life because I don’t have any interest in tweeting, facing, blogging or tubing. Frankly I don’t know of anyone whose life would be sufficiently interesting to follow their petty likes and dislikes, what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I seem to be stuck in what you might call “the real world,” grandchildren, hobbies, and helping people with real world problems. That’s my loss I suppose.

However, life without Flash is just fine, except that there’s just one minor flaw, I keep getting pop-ups tell me I need to install Flash. I’ll try the suggested ad blocking. hopefully that will block Flash reminders too. Things are looking up!

David

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Thank you all for your inputs. Clearly I don’t have a life because I don’t have any interest in tweeting, facing, blogging or tubing. Frankly I don’t know of anyone whose life would be sufficiently interesting to follow their petty likes and dislikes, what they had for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I seem to be stuck in what you might call “the real world,” grandchildren, hobbies, and helping people with real world problems. That’s my loss I suppose.

However, life without Flash is just fine, except that there’s just one minor flaw, I keep getting pop-ups tell me I need to install Flash. I’ll try the suggested ad blocking. hopefully that will block Flash reminders too. Things are looking up!

David

Not sure if the ad blocker will stop the Flash, sooner or later you’ll need it for something else, the reminder will be there again. Flash in itself isn’t a security issue, just as Java isn’t. It’s what’s done with the apps that is.

Plus, it’s a good idea to remove the prior version of Flash or Java before upgrading the the newest version. Oracle even recommends this.

http://www.java.com/en/download/faq/remove_olderversions.xml

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-9837179-33.html

This way, all of the leftovers gets removed. Revo Uninstaller (the free version) is good for this.

Cat

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Flash is needed to view videos, among other things. There’s even 64 bit Flash for IE & non-IE. Here are all 4 versions. Note that these are the latest betas, once you click onto one, each prior version can be seen. It’ll be 1 or 2 links below the latest one (the stable version). I’ve always used the very latest, haven’t had problems with them.

http://www.filehippo.com/search?q=adobe+flash

I used to use 64 bit IE sometimes when I didn’t want to see ads, but some things that I needed still weren’t there. 64 bit Flash corrected the issue. There is 64 bit Java & Silverlight also, on the same site.

Cat

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I seem to be stuck in what you might call “the real world,” grandchildren, hobbies, and helping people with real world problems.

Not your loss…but, those are some of the exact reasons for getting INTO the social Internet; especially the grandchildren when they integrate and suddenly you can follow them; their activities, their interests; communicate with them online. No secret to Facebook’s success. Skype integrates pretty well with Facebook as well so now there they are; grandma and granddaughter, two and a half hours apart (or 5 minutes when she’s home from school), face to face (pardon the pun), having a chat.

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No one really needs Flash (or QuickTime, .NET, Silverlight, Java, Adobe Reader, etc.), but it is sometimes useful to install it for some locally installed programs.

In Firefox, I prefer to selectively filter Flash and Silverlight content using the Flashbock addon, which works well with the NoScript addon, even beyond the NoScript Whitelist settings…

(Edit Note: These links are to the official distribution sites, not links to third-party download sites or unofficial beta software downloads from unauthorized sites. Whenever possible, always go to the official distribution sites, and avoid third-parties if possible, unless you really don’t care about possible malware on your machine…)

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