I Hate Flash (OT, Believe It or Not!)

saa--

please bear with me, this does come around to astronomy (sort of). :-)

i hate macromedia flash. i hate it because those who implement it demand
that i cede control of basic functions of my computer to them. what i hate
more than anything else is when they disable the feature buttons (browser
stop and right click loop, playback, etc), making it impossible for me to
stop some incessantly annoying animation that makes it very difficult to
concentrate on adjacent text. therefore, i've installed flashwitch:

http://www.flashswitch.com/

this beautiful little utility lets me keep flash off except when i want it
otherwise.

well, a daily read of mine is the USA today website. and, i've noticed that
starry night software is advertised there (ah! on topic!). well, today i
bothered to look at the links and, guess what: they're inoperative. that
is, until i turn flash on. now, i'll admit that once i did turn flash on
the ad was slow paced and came to an end by itself (rather than blinking 5
bps ad nauseum to "get my attention"). however, i hate flash because it's
so abused. so it is only rarely turned on at my computer. and i strongly
encourage everyone in saa-land to do two things:

1. install a utility like flashswitch and set it to off.

2. never use flash for your advertising purposes (should you have the power
to decide) until such time as those idiots (sorry for the harsh language)
who sell the software and implement its features realize that if we wish to
turn an ad's animation off, we've looked at it and determined we're not
interested!

clear, dark skies--

mark d.

mark d. doiron wrote:

i hate macromedia flash...

It's not just you, :-( Every time I go into a new site and a
flash animation screen shows up, I simply press "Back" and never
bother with this site again. The same applies to any site that's
in any other way too "fancy" (drop-down menus that work on IE, but
not on Mozilla, auto-resizing screens, heavy graphics).
Unfortunately some astronomy sites have this stuff too.

So, to all S.A.A. members: Please, do not overburden your sites
with junk. Make them simple, so more people can enjoy them.

- A

Nice to see others share my disdain for Flash.

My own way of handling the problem has been to put Flash On/Off buttons
at the front end of my Start Menu. They simply add/remove the line in
my registry that makes Flash work.

Flash normally stays off here, but now and again someone will point out
a good use for the technology (yesterday's example of this was
http://www.themeatrix.com/) and I'll turn it on long enough to view
that.

Better to never load that piece of crap on the computer. Anyplace that
I've gone and the request for the program has come up has pretty much shown
me little of worth otherwise at any place in the pageset.

--
Bob May
Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less.
Works evevery time it is tried!

"Bob May" wrote in message
...
Better to never load that piece of crap on the computer. Anyplace that
I've gone and the request for the program has come up has pretty much
shown
me little of worth otherwise at any place in the pageset.

--
Bob May
Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink
less.
Works evevery time it is tried!



Part of the mozilla foundation has developed a very fast rendering browser
called Firebird. All very nice, but it does have a plug in which prevents
Flash from playing, but also displays a 'click to play' placeholder on the
web page, should you wish to actually play the flash. It does work very
nicely.

Regards,

Will

In article ,
"Will Woodvine" wrote:

"Bob May" wrote in message
...
Better to never load that piece of crap on the computer. Anyplace that
I've gone and the request for the program has come up has pretty much
shown me little of worth otherwise at any place in the pageset.

Part of the mozilla foundation has developed a very fast rendering browser
called Firebird. All very nice, but it does have a plug in which prevents
Flash from playing, but also displays a 'click to play' placeholder on the
web page, should you wish to actually play the flash. It does work very
nicely.

What an excellent idea. (I've been using Firebird a bit, but hadn't
noticed that particular feature.)

I'm currently resisting pressure from some groups inside my company to
use Flash animations in our online (shipped with product) documentation.
It comes and goes...

Part of the mozilla foundation has developed a very fast rendering =
browser
called Firebird. All very nice, but it does have a plug in which =
prevents
Flash from playing, but also displays a 'click to play' placeholder on =
the
web page, should you wish to actually play the flash. It does work very
nicely.


Firebird is my primary browser and i don't have Flash installed for it. =
When i need/want to see flash i launch IE. I'll have to look for the =
'click to play' plug-in. Pretty much the only reason i use IE these days =
is when i want to see Flash or Shockwave.

-Florian
Stargazing.com

mark d. doiron:
i hate macromedia flash.

Me, too. If I wanted to watch cartoons I would tune into the Cartoon
Network. I don't want my computer to be a television, cheapening and
degrading everything it touches.

Davoud

--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com

Davoud wrote in :

Me, too. If I wanted to watch cartoons I would tune into the Cartoon
Network. I don't want my computer to be a television, cheapening and
degrading everything it touches.


Ironically, if you want to view CN's TV sched on their website, you have to
use.... errrr..... LOL!

"mark d. doiron" wrote in message
news:rMSqb.2126$643.1252@okepread03...

1. install a utility like flashswitch and set it to off.

Neat utility, but with all due respect to the Russian author, my experience
of adding lots of utilities to IE makes it less stable. My own approach is
to disable ActiveX altogether, and place Flash-using sites that I visit on a
regular basis in the "Trusted Sites Zone" - this allows Flash and scripts to
run unimpeded as required.