I don’t like Flash because it is responsible for the overwhelming majority of my browser crashes. I don’t like it because it consumes memory and (especially) CPU resources on my computer for almost the sole purpose of showing me advertisements, which also translates directly to reduced battery life on my laptop.
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But it’s interesting to note that it’s quite a technical and ethical challenge to run a browser without Flash.
I’ve written before about how important it is to optimize CPU usage of your website for the mobile world. And this is yet another reason for anyone who is add-supported. People will tolerate advertisements that are just there. But when they kill their work time, or are otherwise malignant, then they will take active steps to stop them. And that means no more advertising revenue.
I installed CtF today and am not sure I like it. Because the flash resources are still being downloaded (but not displayed), I am forced to put up with latency that does not visibly transmit to anything new appearing on my screen during a page load. Because flash ads are usually one of the last things to load (being dynamically chosen and loaded usually after page request), I am stuck sitting staring at a basically complete page with an incomplete progress bar; something that–and I still don’t know why–rubs me the wrong way.
On an somewhat related note, meebo has been showing infinite progress bars more often lately.
Comment by Jason Petersen — January 30, 2009 @ 6:12 am
I haven’t tried CtF yet. What I really care about is CPU load — better known as battery life. I want all content I’m not looking at to be idle. Actually replace “I’m not looking at” with “I don’t give a shit about” — but that’s harder to detect in software. CtF has gotten a lot of exposure and Its being rapidly improved. Hopefully all our wants will be met soon. I’m sick of Safari taking up 30% CPU b/c some article I left open for reference has adds.
Comment by Vincent Gable — January 30, 2009 @ 11:25 am