4 ms·

It's easy to see for yourself how many crashes are caused by Flash. Firefox used to crash regularly for me. After I installed FlashBlock it can run pretty much

by nzmsv 17y ago

It's easy to see for yourself how many crashes are caused by Flash. Firefox used to crash regularly for me. After I installed FlashBlock it can run pretty much indefinitely.

jgrahamc 17y ago
I agree. I don't mind Flash when it's used for something useful, but most of the time (perhaps even 99.99% of the time) it's being used for ads. Those ads are, by definition, very attention grabbing because of their use of animation. The animation uses my CPU. So, in general I say... go away Flash and browse without it enabled. It's very, very rare that I need to access a web site's Flash.
- amadiver 17y ago
  Seriously, what do you think would happen if, magically, all those Flash ads disappeared one day? Bloated, gif-based animated ads and/or HTML5 <canvas><audio><video> animated ads would take their place. (With, in many instances, much worse performance). Flash isn't the issue; CPU-pegging animation, and ads, are the issue. The Medium != the Message.
  - GHFigs 17y ago
    what do you think would happen if, magically, all those Flash ads disappeared one day? Users of FlashBlock, ClickToFlash, and platforms that don't support Flash (such as the iPhone) already know what would happen, and they like it.
    - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
      No, they know what happens if the ads disappear for them, but if they disappeared for everyone, they would just be replaced with other sources of annoyance and bother. Yes, you could block some of those, but eventually, you start blocking things that are genuinely useful, like images or javascript. Right now, Flash one most sites means one of two things: ads or video. Kill Flash and now the situation won't be nearly as clear or easy to block.
      - GHFigs 17y ago
        Unless you've got a solution for the underlying problem that it is profitable to distract people, this is going to happen no matter what people do. Removing Flash from the list of ways which they are able to do that means that they have to work that much harder, rather than you having to work that much harder to conserve your attention by blocking it. Make the bastards chase you.
        ryanwaggoner 17y ago
        That's just it, though...blocking flash is easy and 99% of the time, all I'm missing is ads and video. And one click displays the video if I really want to watch it. Whereas if flash goes away, I'll have to start blocking things that are more useful on more levels, like images, javascript, etc.
  - benologist 17y ago
    To be fair Flash doesn't help the issue. I make games in Flash and performance is frequently an issue I and others battle against. The point at which Flash performance begins degrading is stupidly early.
  - axod 17y ago
    The solution in that case is to stop browsing websites that use annoying intrusive ads.
    - jokermatt999 17y ago
      It's not just poor sites that use annoying and intrusive ads. Many newspapers and otherwise high quality sites have intrusive ads. It isn't easy to simply drop all of those sites and remain informed.
  - ericd 17y ago
    The Mac implementation of the Flash player is awful, it regularly pegs my CPU. I'm assuming that HTML 5 in a well coded browser will not do the same, no matter how annoying the ad.
    - Groxx 17y ago
      If you're talking Youtube's HTML5 video player, I regularly stay below 20% CPU. That's 10% total power, as percentages go above 100 when using more than one core. Otherwise, it'd be Javascript + <canvas>, which so far is pretty darned fast, but not too friendly to ad-servers. Not Flash-fast, but speedy, and quickly getting faster. If JS+canvas gets more popular, you can bet that JS will get WAY more attention in this area.
      - cake 17y ago
        I'm actually quite disapointed by Youtube's HTML5. I had great expectations, I know it's just the beginning and I'm sure it'll be better, but I'm closer to 80% CPU than 20% with my Macbook on Safari 4.
        Groxx 17y ago
        That could explain it. I'm on a MBP, with 10.6, so I may be getting the hardware decoding, while you're not.
        tl 17y ago
        On Ubuntu 9.10(all same video): Youtube HTML5 - 15-20% CPU Youtube Flash - 20-25% CPU .flv in Totem - 2-3% CPU Clearly, there is optimisation work needed here.
    - notauser 17y ago
      Any kind of JavaScript while(true) loop will lock up the page, so you aren't safe from incompetent coders just yet. Depending on the browser and the OS that can bog down the CPU as badly as Flash. (And there's no move towards parallel execution of in-page dom-touching JavaScript yet - web workers can't do it. Concurrency is such an issue that you can't even pass a function into a web worker in case it has bound variables - it's separate-script-and-message-passing only.)
  - est 17y ago
    Seriously, if Flash disappeared, ads made by canvas or SVG inserted via obfuscated javascript is harder to block than plain Flash ads.
mmastrac 17y ago
Mozilla's crash stats often show Flash as a very large percentage of crashes. You can see a dozen or so crash lines in there that happen in NPSWF32 or "Flash Plugin": http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/query/query?product=Firefox&version=Firefox%3A3.5.7&date=&range_value=1&range_unit=weeks&query_search=signature&query_type=exact&query=&build_id=&do_query=1 http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/query/query?product=Firefox&#... I think that plugin instability is a big problem overall, probably just as big as the 32/64-bit plugin divide, which itself was a serious blocking problem on 64-bit Linux for a while.
- Skriticos 17y ago
  I'm on 64bit Linux here, and as long as I used the Adobe Flash plugin, it regularly crashed (in various ways, most of the time just the flash subsystem). I know there is a 64bit version now, but I got genuinely fed up with them, so I deleted the plugin and use swfdec for youtube and just don't care about the rest. Can't say that I'm bugged much, my browsing experience actually improved. The main reason I boycott flash is still, that it is by no means sustainable and it inhibits the progress of the web a lot (get the feeling of a hamster in a hamster wheel, solving the same damn problems over and over again). It must simply die.
JunkDNA 17y ago
I used to think these claims were a bit bogus. However, my macbook pro was locking up solid and completely unresponsive at seemingly random times requiring a hard-reset (running 10.5.x). The constant thread I noticed was that I was always using either NetNewsWire or Safari when it happened. I kept trying different things to fix the issue (erasing preferences, verifying permissions, etc...) but no luck at all. There was nothing in the crash logs and no kernel panic or anything like that for me to even trace the culprit. It would just completely hang without so much as a wimper. The last thing I tried was that I installed click-to-flash. I haven't seen one of these crashes since. I thought for sure there was no possible way it could be flash since the mac usually does a pretty decent job of managing hung apps without bringing the whole system down, but for whatever reason it really looks like flash is causing this. I suspect it's some odd problem with my flash installation or configuration.
- epochwolf 17y ago
  I've had the same problems with my machine. With both 10.5 and 10.6. Flash just sucks on a mac.
  - houseabsolute 17y ago
    It shouldn't be possible for it to lock up the computer, though. It doesn't install drivers. No matter how you slice it, that is Apple's fault.
gb 17y ago
I hear this a lot, but it must be a thing for Mac users mainly. I've never had flash crash Firefox on the PC, and I'm a flash developer a lot of the time. Interesting.
Groxx 17y ago
Flash causes more crashes than any other application for me on both OSX (Safari) and Windows (Firefox). It's horrendous. Flashblock / ClickToFlash did the same for me, I nearly don't crash anything any more, and I don't fear losing all my tabs by opening a random website. As to the "flash where flash is useful", hopefully JavaScript + the canvas will eliminate the majority of those cases. There are still some cases where flash is significantly better, but they're pretty rare. Most of the time I highly suspect it's popular because of the nice editing tools, not because the producer(s) wanted to target Flash.

by nzmsv 17y ago

It's easy to see for yourself how many crashes are caused by Flash. Firefox used to crash regularly for me. After I installed FlashBlock it can run pretty much indefinitely.

jgrahamc 17y ago

I agree. I don't mind Flash when it's used for something useful, but most of the time (perhaps even 99.99% of the time) it's being used for ads. Those ads are, by definition, very attention grabbing because of their use of animation. The animation uses my CPU. So, in general I say... go away Flash and browse without it enabled. It's very, very rare that I need to access a web site's Flash.

amadiver 17y ago
Seriously, what do you think would happen if, magically, all those Flash ads disappeared one day? Bloated, gif-based animated ads and/or HTML5 <canvas><audio><video> animated ads would take their place. (With, in many instances, much worse performance). Flash isn't the issue; CPU-pegging animation, and ads, are the issue. The Medium != the Message.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  what do you think would happen if, magically, all those Flash ads disappeared one day? Users of FlashBlock, ClickToFlash, and platforms that don't support Flash (such as the iPhone) already know what would happen, and they like it.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    No, they know what happens if the ads disappear for them, but if they disappeared for everyone, they would just be replaced with other sources of annoyance and bother. Yes, you could block some of those, but eventually, you start blocking things that are genuinely useful, like images or javascript. Right now, Flash one most sites means one of two things: ads or video. Kill Flash and now the situation won't be nearly as clear or easy to block.
    - GHFigs 17y ago
      Unless you've got a solution for the underlying problem that it is profitable to distract people, this is going to happen no matter what people do. Removing Flash from the list of ways which they are able to do that means that they have to work that much harder, rather than you having to work that much harder to conserve your attention by blocking it. Make the bastards chase you.
      - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
        That's just it, though...blocking flash is easy and 99% of the time, all I'm missing is ads and video. And one click displays the video if I really want to watch it. Whereas if flash goes away, I'll have to start blocking things that are more useful on more levels, like images, javascript, etc.
- benologist 17y ago
  To be fair Flash doesn't help the issue. I make games in Flash and performance is frequently an issue I and others battle against. The point at which Flash performance begins degrading is stupidly early.
- axod 17y ago
  The solution in that case is to stop browsing websites that use annoying intrusive ads.
  - jokermatt999 17y ago
    It's not just poor sites that use annoying and intrusive ads. Many newspapers and otherwise high quality sites have intrusive ads. It isn't easy to simply drop all of those sites and remain informed.
- ericd 17y ago
  The Mac implementation of the Flash player is awful, it regularly pegs my CPU. I'm assuming that HTML 5 in a well coded browser will not do the same, no matter how annoying the ad.
  - Groxx 17y ago
    If you're talking Youtube's HTML5 video player, I regularly stay below 20% CPU. That's 10% total power, as percentages go above 100 when using more than one core. Otherwise, it'd be Javascript + <canvas>, which so far is pretty darned fast, but not too friendly to ad-servers. Not Flash-fast, but speedy, and quickly getting faster. If JS+canvas gets more popular, you can bet that JS will get WAY more attention in this area.
    - cake 17y ago
      I'm actually quite disapointed by Youtube's HTML5. I had great expectations, I know it's just the beginning and I'm sure it'll be better, but I'm closer to 80% CPU than 20% with my Macbook on Safari 4.
      - Groxx 17y ago
        That could explain it. I'm on a MBP, with 10.6, so I may be getting the hardware decoding, while you're not.
      - tl 17y ago
        On Ubuntu 9.10(all same video): Youtube HTML5 - 15-20% CPU Youtube Flash - 20-25% CPU .flv in Totem - 2-3% CPU Clearly, there is optimisation work needed here.
  - notauser 17y ago
    Any kind of JavaScript while(true) loop will lock up the page, so you aren't safe from incompetent coders just yet. Depending on the browser and the OS that can bog down the CPU as badly as Flash. (And there's no move towards parallel execution of in-page dom-touching JavaScript yet - web workers can't do it. Concurrency is such an issue that you can't even pass a function into a web worker in case it has bound variables - it's separate-script-and-message-passing only.)
- est 17y ago
  Seriously, if Flash disappeared, ads made by canvas or SVG inserted via obfuscated javascript is harder to block than plain Flash ads.

mmastrac 17y ago

Mozilla's crash stats often show Flash as a very large percentage of crashes. You can see a dozen or so crash lines in there that happen in NPSWF32 or "Flash Plugin": http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/query/query?product=Firefox&version=Firefox%3A3.5.7&date=&range_value=1&range_unit=weeks&query_search=signature&query_type=exact&query=&build_id=&do_query=1 http://crash-stats.mozilla.com/query/query?product=Firefox&#... I think that plugin instability is a big problem overall, probably just as big as the 32/64-bit plugin divide, which itself was a serious blocking problem on 64-bit Linux for a while.

Skriticos 17y ago
I'm on 64bit Linux here, and as long as I used the Adobe Flash plugin, it regularly crashed (in various ways, most of the time just the flash subsystem). I know there is a 64bit version now, but I got genuinely fed up with them, so I deleted the plugin and use swfdec for youtube and just don't care about the rest. Can't say that I'm bugged much, my browsing experience actually improved. The main reason I boycott flash is still, that it is by no means sustainable and it inhibits the progress of the web a lot (get the feeling of a hamster in a hamster wheel, solving the same damn problems over and over again). It must simply die.

JunkDNA 17y ago

I used to think these claims were a bit bogus. However, my macbook pro was locking up solid and completely unresponsive at seemingly random times requiring a hard-reset (running 10.5.x). The constant thread I noticed was that I was always using either NetNewsWire or Safari when it happened. I kept trying different things to fix the issue (erasing preferences, verifying permissions, etc...) but no luck at all. There was nothing in the crash logs and no kernel panic or anything like that for me to even trace the culprit. It would just completely hang without so much as a wimper. The last thing I tried was that I installed click-to-flash. I haven't seen one of these crashes since. I thought for sure there was no possible way it could be flash since the mac usually does a pretty decent job of managing hung apps without bringing the whole system down, but for whatever reason it really looks like flash is causing this. I suspect it's some odd problem with my flash installation or configuration.

epochwolf 17y ago
I've had the same problems with my machine. With both 10.5 and 10.6. Flash just sucks on a mac.
- houseabsolute 17y ago
  It shouldn't be possible for it to lock up the computer, though. It doesn't install drivers. No matter how you slice it, that is Apple's fault.

gb 17y ago

I hear this a lot, but it must be a thing for Mac users mainly. I've never had flash crash Firefox on the PC, and I'm a flash developer a lot of the time. Interesting.

Groxx 17y ago

Flash causes more crashes than any other application for me on both OSX (Safari) and Windows (Firefox). It's horrendous. Flashblock / ClickToFlash did the same for me, I nearly don't crash anything any more, and I don't fear losing all my tabs by opening a random website. As to the "flash where flash is useful", hopefully JavaScript + the canvas will eliminate the majority of those cases. There are still some cases where flash is significantly better, but they're pretty rare. Most of the time I highly suspect it's popular because of the nice editing tools, not because the producer(s) wanted to target Flash.