5 ms·

I'm not sure this is particularly significant...as you could say the same thing about many tasks. Not running video encoding on your Macbook Air boosts battery

I'm not sure this is particularly significant...as you could say the same thing about many tasks. Not running video encoding on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours. Not running 3D games on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours. Not watching 1080p movies on your Macbook Air boosts battery life by 2 hours.

evo_9 16y ago
Adblock and/or ClickToFlash also would do the trick.
- protomyth 16y ago
  To a point, but some sites actually serve up different content if your browser can't do Flash.
  - evo_9 16y ago
    If the goal is to remove/control Flashes consumption of resources - aka the original post - then my suggestion stands. We are talking about Flash - not ads per se.
    - protomyth 16y ago
      True (and I wasn't too clear), I was pointing out that some sites actually serve up video in h.264 instead of flash when no flash is detected. The native h.264 is more efficient than flash for videos you actually want to see.
msbarnett 16y ago
I'm not sure that "browsing the internet and being shown advertisements on web pages" should be considered a task whose intensiveness is on-par with 3D rendering, 1080p decoding, or encoding. Or rather, I think it isn't a flattering comment on Flash's efficiency that having it display ads on webpages requires that much processing power.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- pavlov 16y ago
  I don't understand why people think Flash itself is somehow responsible for content that is CPU-intensive (as evidenced by the number of upvotes on your comment). Flash is a Turing-complete runtime that executes 3rd party content, and the environment that hosts Flash doesn't place any restrictions on how much resources it can use. With such liberties, it's completely expected that some people will produce banner ads that consume 99% of CPU time. CSS+JavaScript has the same exact problem, so getting rid of Flash wouldn't solve anything. (You may think it does because you're running a Flash blocker, but that's just because the offending content producers haven't migrated to your preferred solution yet.)
  - boltofblue 16y ago
    Webit is starting to provide rendering and animation that is more native and more efficient. Simple fact is, Flash is not as good as we need it to be.
  - wonderzombie 16y ago
    "CSS+JavaScript has the same exact problem" I don't have anything but anecdotal data to back this up, which is a huge caveat. Please feel free to knock this down. But I have to ask: have we seen as much improvement in Flash performance as we have in plain old browser performance? Browsers are improving by leaps and bounds. I'm skeptical that Flash has had a similar performance renaissance. For one thing, who've they had to compete with until recently? Browser vendors are tripping over one another to improve speed. Until HTML5, you were out of luck for rich content if you didn't want to use Flash. Now, I agree that eliminating Flash won't solve ads in one stroke of JS. Even so, moving that stuff out of Flash (which browser vendors have little control over) into the browser itself enables vendors to improve whatever performance-troubled cases that HTML5 ads provide. And, most importantly, improving HTML5 performance, ads or no, is a win across the board, IMO. A faster browser means faster ads AND apps.
  - tomlin 16y ago
abstractbill 16y ago
I've done a lot of Flash hacking while at justin.tv and I have to say, while it has its bugs, the Flash virtual machine is an under-appreciated piece of technology. It can be incredibly fast, in the right hands. I believe the people calling for its demise are actually calling for an end to sloppy programming by bad coders who work for ad agencies. If Flash ever actually dies, and gets replaced by "HTML5", people are going to be sorely disappointed when those very same bad coders simply start writing exactly the same sloppy code in javascript.
- msbarnett 16y ago
  To a certain extent, I agree; sloppily written Flash software is a huge part of the problem. But Adobe isn't doing itself any favours either. Once every day or two the fans on my laptop ramp up for apparently no reason -- and a quick trip into the process monitor invariably reveals that the Flash plugin process has gone rampant and is eating 100% of my CPU, long after I've left the site that was using it. It's excruciating to wait for Adobe to fix these long-standing issues, as they seem to feel no real urgency to improve the performance and stability of the plugin. "HTML5" as a group of technologies to replace Flash will no doubt see its share of terribly written uses, but at least the Firefox, Chrome, Safari et al teams can compete to write the most-efficient, least buggy runtimes for those crappy sites to run on.
  - abstractbill 16y ago
    You're vastly underestimating the ability of a poor programmer to bring your computer to its knees ;) A tight infinite loop running on any virtual machine will have the same effect.
    - msbarnett 16y ago
      That's why Javascript interpreters have, blessedly, implemented "Unresponsive Script" warnings that let you kill off those scripts. Sadly, Adobe hasn't seen fit to offer comparable functionality for dealing with a Flash application that goes berserk. But again, I think that comes down to browsers being in strong competition creating a lot of incentive for them to work hard on efficiency and UX, where Adobe is content to let usability stagnate and bugs fester.

evo_9 16y ago

Adblock and/or ClickToFlash also would do the trick.

protomyth 16y ago
To a point, but some sites actually serve up different content if your browser can't do Flash.
- evo_9 16y ago
  If the goal is to remove/control Flashes consumption of resources - aka the original post - then my suggestion stands. We are talking about Flash - not ads per se.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    True (and I wasn't too clear), I was pointing out that some sites actually serve up video in h.264 instead of flash when no flash is detected. The native h.264 is more efficient than flash for videos you actually want to see.

msbarnett 16y ago

I'm not sure that "browsing the internet and being shown advertisements on web pages" should be considered a task whose intensiveness is on-par with 3D rendering, 1080p decoding, or encoding. Or rather, I think it isn't a flattering comment on Flash's efficiency that having it display ads on webpages requires that much processing power.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
pavlov 16y ago
I don't understand why people think Flash itself is somehow responsible for content that is CPU-intensive (as evidenced by the number of upvotes on your comment). Flash is a Turing-complete runtime that executes 3rd party content, and the environment that hosts Flash doesn't place any restrictions on how much resources it can use. With such liberties, it's completely expected that some people will produce banner ads that consume 99% of CPU time. CSS+JavaScript has the same exact problem, so getting rid of Flash wouldn't solve anything. (You may think it does because you're running a Flash blocker, but that's just because the offending content producers haven't migrated to your preferred solution yet.)
- boltofblue 16y ago
  Webit is starting to provide rendering and animation that is more native and more efficient. Simple fact is, Flash is not as good as we need it to be.
- wonderzombie 16y ago
  "CSS+JavaScript has the same exact problem" I don't have anything but anecdotal data to back this up, which is a huge caveat. Please feel free to knock this down. But I have to ask: have we seen as much improvement in Flash performance as we have in plain old browser performance? Browsers are improving by leaps and bounds. I'm skeptical that Flash has had a similar performance renaissance. For one thing, who've they had to compete with until recently? Browser vendors are tripping over one another to improve speed. Until HTML5, you were out of luck for rich content if you didn't want to use Flash. Now, I agree that eliminating Flash won't solve ads in one stroke of JS. Even so, moving that stuff out of Flash (which browser vendors have little control over) into the browser itself enables vendors to improve whatever performance-troubled cases that HTML5 ads provide. And, most importantly, improving HTML5 performance, ads or no, is a win across the board, IMO. A faster browser means faster ads AND apps.
- tomlin 16y ago

abstractbill 16y ago

I've done a lot of Flash hacking while at justin.tv and I have to say, while it has its bugs, the Flash virtual machine is an under-appreciated piece of technology. It can be incredibly fast, in the right hands. I believe the people calling for its demise are actually calling for an end to sloppy programming by bad coders who work for ad agencies. If Flash ever actually dies, and gets replaced by "HTML5", people are going to be sorely disappointed when those very same bad coders simply start writing exactly the same sloppy code in javascript.

msbarnett 16y ago
To a certain extent, I agree; sloppily written Flash software is a huge part of the problem. But Adobe isn't doing itself any favours either. Once every day or two the fans on my laptop ramp up for apparently no reason -- and a quick trip into the process monitor invariably reveals that the Flash plugin process has gone rampant and is eating 100% of my CPU, long after I've left the site that was using it. It's excruciating to wait for Adobe to fix these long-standing issues, as they seem to feel no real urgency to improve the performance and stability of the plugin. "HTML5" as a group of technologies to replace Flash will no doubt see its share of terribly written uses, but at least the Firefox, Chrome, Safari et al teams can compete to write the most-efficient, least buggy runtimes for those crappy sites to run on.
- abstractbill 16y ago
  You're vastly underestimating the ability of a poor programmer to bring your computer to its knees ;) A tight infinite loop running on any virtual machine will have the same effect.
  - msbarnett 16y ago
    That's why Javascript interpreters have, blessedly, implemented "Unresponsive Script" warnings that let you kill off those scripts. Sadly, Adobe hasn't seen fit to offer comparable functionality for dealing with a Flash application that goes berserk. But again, I think that comes down to browsers being in strong competition creating a lot of incentive for them to work hard on efficiency and UX, where Adobe is content to let usability stagnate and bugs fester.