I Hate Adobe Flash!!!!!!!!!!

You so have to get this installed: http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master

I’m getting the exact same thing when I pulled up your site, only it didn’t shut down safari.

I’ve seen that error on Safari. Turns out to usually be a conflict with an existing add-on (Cool Iris doesn’t play nice with a lot of other Safari add-ons).

May not be your issue but might be somewhere to start. :)

It’s just as buggy from a developer’s perspective as it is a user’s, which is why I try to avoid having to work in it at all costs. For the record, it’s been crashing my Win XP and Vista systems for the last 2 or 3 months so Mac users shouldn’t feel too special ;)

I agree with you, all of my problems with safari are flash related. We need to have a new, clean, open source platform that can compete with flash. However, I feel the best alternative to flash right now is microsoft silverlight both in terms of features and market penetration, but unfortunately it is officially closed source. Hopefully the moonlight project can catch up to silverlight!

I share your anger Chris, Safari crashes are so expected by me now whenever i know theres Flash on a site that I just throw up my hands and let it quit on itself.

Flash is a real pain on my MacBook too. Anytime there’s Flash content on a website, my CPU goes to the roof and the fan turns full speed.

As a technology that exists since several years now, it should run better.

Chris, I have an Athlon XP2800 you can use for flash. It runs Ubuntu and 98SE nicely. And doesn’t crash from the stress of video.

Seriously. Adobe needs to keep that from happening. not impressive on nearly new hardware and a state of the art OS. Doesn’t look good from a person that uses XP Home as a main OS on a daily bases with weeks of uptime. How rude!

You hit it square on. Thanks for articulating a response to all of the bitching about not having Flash on the iPhone that I hear on a weekly basis.

I couldn’t agree more!

This is why I use FlashBlock in Firefox. I have my own complaints about firefox too, but flashblock is the only way to go. If you decide you want to see the flash movie, you just click the little icon and it loads.

The really irritating thing about Adobe’s lack of attention to the platform is the fact that they wouldn’t even exist if wasn’t for the Mac. Ungrateful backstabbers.

What apps are you running that is causing all this? I run firefox on leopard but have never seen anything like that before

You said towards the end that switching OS isn’t the solution. Do you mean go back to Windows? If more PCs switched to Mac then Adobe might give a damn! After all, you could say that without Apple’s 19.5% share in Adobe when it all started, they might not even be here today…

As for competitors, I think if Microsoft pushes Silverlight, and integrates it into Windows 7, I think Flash could have some serious opposition, after all look what happened when Microsoft integrated a browser…

Couldn’t agree more Chris.

Have a little bit of Flash running in a browser on the Mac and you might as well be running a large piece of music or video software for the way it works the computer! It has to be the least efficient software that runs on a Mac. Entire complex games require less heating of the system than running simple Flash.

with best regards,
Karn.

I agree with you that Flash sucks. In fact, I expect pretty much everybody who has used a computer and is NOT on the Adobe payroll would agree that Flash sucks. But, it sucks equally badly in Firefox. And it also sucks in IE and Firefox in Windows. It’s not just a Mac problem. Ironically, there are some no-nothing tech pundits who are disturbed because it is not on the iPhone. And, of course, you know Silverlight is not going to be any better….

I know what the problem is…. Your using safari. I tried out the Beta, iv tried out actual release, Safari just isnt friendly to me. I suggest trying Google chrome, dont know if mac supports it, but I have yet to experience a crash in Chrome, I also suggest just good ole firefox as a backup browser. It has features that Chrome doesn’t and I sometimes need.

Ok now I know I’m not the only one. I’m in the same situation, the only app that crashes on my mac is Safari, and only when flash is doing it’s business, so annoying. Adobe should seriously spend just a bit more time developing it…

stuff I wrote before this form decided to clear my text because I forgot to provide a name.

sorry, I aint typing my lengthy advice all over again.

so don’t use flash. >99% of the time it’s not necessary.

Flash is doomed. I hope it will disappear and let place to more powerful language that does not require plugins (aka : Javascript + CSS3 + html 5)

“… there are some no-nothing tech pundits who are disturbed because it is not on the iPhone.”

Because we all want those stupid Flash ads on our phones, too, bothering us and running our batteries down.

Grief, it’s not as if you can’t get YouTube on the iPhone anyway. WTF would I want Flash on a phone?

And the Mac version does seem to be far less optimized than the Windows one.

I’m with Etienne – roll on HTML5, SVG, etc.

Flash sucks but I rarely have any issues. YOu have a third party plugin issue mis-behaving with flash or something. I have no issues like that.

I have Perian, Flip4mac, Silverlight, Shockwave and flash plugins installed and they all work fine together.

I think you got something else going on there……

The brutal inefficiency of Flash under MacOS X is well-known. I disable it in Safari 4 beta. Most Flash content is pointless eye candy designed to win awards on FWA.

Nah… Wait for Silverlight to grow legs. (Or some other anatomically selective parts that might suggest it’s past puberty and ready for the real world.)

Adobe flash causes kernel panics in my G5. One way to get around the problem is to run a program called iDelete. This program cleans up the cache associated with Flash.

Good title. Pretty flashy.

Why are progressive version of acrobat reader progressively slower and slower? I wish Macromedia hadn’t budged. Flash was fine when it came out. Good software doesn’t need updating.

Yup. Flash sucks, down with flash. I don’t use Safari on the mac but 99.9% of my Linux and Mac Firefox crashes are caused by Adobe’s Flash… at least in 64 bit land. Flashblock http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ is the first plugin I install in any new Firefox deploy.

Someone told me it had to do with a trackpad driver :/

“It’s not Safari, gang – it’s Flash, pure and simple” Really?

While I have no love for Flash, I also don’t have any problems with it, other than hogging system resources (much like AIR does.)

I thoroughly disagree with it not being Safari though, While I hold no hatred for Mac or Safari, I also don’t excuse their problems and faults (as some who shall remain nameless do.)

They are far from perfect and the conflict more likely lies with Safari/Mac, as I never see these errors on my Firefox/PC Machine but encounter the same on my Safari/Mac Machine.

So through simple deduction I’d say “It’s not Flash, gang – it’s Safari, pure and simple.” Feel free to live in denial though.

FYI Media Encoder is running on my mac as we speak.

I never see crashes on Safari due to flash (unless possibly by a flash based advertisement being responsible)

People often ignore the underlying war. Remember when MS tried to usurp font technology? If you see Arial anytime during the day, you might even say they might have won a bit.

The media player encoder war has been going on almost as long. Flash is at war with WMV and Quicktime (it needn’t be- the overwhelming use of Flash is as a totally unnecessary wrapper for video content, but one that is convenient for those streaming or converting content JUST BECAUSE Flash made itself ubiquitous for a function it never really should have.

My problems with flash are that it is still being used too many places it should not, and that it is a resource and bandwidth hog, and that it is going to become a lock in as IPTV takes hold– they have already created Flash on a Chip and sold it to all those making crapware cable converter boxes.

Chris,
I’m glad to finally see that other people are experiencing the frustration of Flash in Safari. If I can tell a site is using Flash content, I avoid it.
Don’t know why some people have been so eager to get Flash on the iPhone. I think it would be a disaster.

Every Safari crash, slowdown and lock ups are all related to Flash. I always send the report to Apple, since Adobe doesn’t give a sh*t about Mac users. Screw Flash, screw Adobe.

If you major issue is Adobe/safary why don’t you try Adobe with Firefox ? you ar enot the first person having issue with SAFARI. I guess hat nacs browser is really a second class product.

I’m not only mad at Flash; I have reached my intolerance level with everything Adobe shovels out at an unsuspecting world. If people are upset with the claims the MicroSoft bought, stole, or othewise kept good programming in their control or destroyed altogether, we can see an even better/worse example with Adobe.
When I first purchased PageMaker, it was from Aldus. Adobe got it and “improved” it until it began working, then suddenly released PM 7 and sent it down the toilet; to be replaced with InDesign. That fiasco is not much – if any – different from the mega-moronic “versions” of Windows and their “improvements” bugs/features, etc. which we are still wishing could be replaced by something simpler and more usable. Consider yourself switching to OS-X from discouragement. That was MicroSoft – now we have the behemoth of Adobe gobbling up anything and everything which may have run well (oops, it may become competition) and then re-releasing it as kraptomatic.
I remember the tech world discussion just that problem when it was announced that Flash had been purchased by Adobe. Many who know how these things work, began weeping and wailing – perhaps before the fact, but the facts have caught up, haven’t they?
As for me, I’m hoping to dump all my Adobe apps as soon as I possibly can. I have read good things about PagePlus, but do want some things to work like they were promised in the earlier releases of InDesign; to wit: boxes/frames which can be given properties, such as soft edges and special designed corners and such, and then dropping graphics into those boxes and seeing instant results.
I’m heading back to Corel Elements for now – Version 8, but already much more promising than anything the CS versions promise, but invade all the systems’ resources to accomplish, … nothing.

Oh yes, it seems that where I work cannot upgrade to 64-bit processors because, … Adobe doesn’t support 64-bit.

How stronghanded, and how disappointing, and how useless?

Well said Chris! Flash sucks – I’ve got to the point of disabling all Flash content by default – under preferences in Safari I untick “Enable plug-ins” (I realise this isn’t much of a solution as it disables all plug-ins, but it works for me …)

If there’s something on the page I desperately need to see I re-enable plug-ins, but 99% of Flash content is irritating adverts anyway …

Maybe one day Adobe will get their shit together, but I’m not holding my breath waiting.

In response to other posters who mention Silverlight, I don’t see that as a viable alternative – in fact, I haven’t installed Silverlight due to a legacy of past Microsoft issues with Office and Messenger.

Anyway, who is to say that once Silverlight gets a foothold and eventually displaces Flash that Microsoft won’t discontinue it for Mac like they did IE?

The sooner both Silverlight and Flash die, the better.

Open standards are the future …

Nice to see the Flash haters out in full force…

Not that anyone cares, but Flash seems to run perfectly fine in Firefox (yes, I’m on OSX), so maybe Safari has a role to play here after all?

Chris, I think you’re missing an exclamation mark in your title.

And more thing: if you hate Flash that much maybe it’s time to remove some of the dozen or so SWFs from your own homepage.

Everybody loves to beat up on flash. But the truth is, it doesn’t crash any of my other browsers, as well as the ones on pc. Whose fault do you think it is now??

I had these crashes whenever a Flash ad misbehaved. I don’t like how many sites use Flash, but Safari should handle it gracefully, not nuke itself. Since installing the Safari 4 Beta, I haven’t had a Flash crash that I can remember.
Flash is unnecessary. I don’t need all singing all dancing menus when I just want to know what your restaurant sells. Nor do I need Flash when I want to look at your auto lineup. So, please, advertisers, do us a favor, and make your ads faster to load, and forget about Flash. But I suppose it is a vain hope to think that people would focus on content, not superficials, since flashy seems to be what people buy.

lolz..as a matter of fact, Mac is a second class product used by a few ;)

yep, flash is EPICALLY bad.

the adobe devs are trying to compete with the infamously incompetent (90’s) netscsape devs for the prize of stupidist engineers of all time.

the day is coming, friends, when msft will not automatically be the worst shit around.

what a sad day that will be.

ps: the QA at apple is nothing to write home about either!

I don’t have similar problems.

Although I don’t experience actual crashes with Flash– just system slowdowns, I must say that I hate it on both Windows and the Mac. It drives me bonkers when a site insists I upgrade to the latest, cruddiest version. SO SICK OF THIS RESOURCE COW! Cannot wait for HTML5, and all the other open source works to replace it. Get this crud off my system. And Reader and Acrobat Pro are really getting to be horrorshows as well. Can we bloat it up any more?

To be fair Flash runs like crap on Windows too. I don’t think anyone at Adobe know how optimize anything, regardless of the platform. It is painfully obvious how sluggish Flash is when comparing it against Microsoft’s new Silverlight.

Wow…at the risk of the federation hunting me down…you guys are hilarious.

1st, you might want to look at what content you’re viewing. Just as a normal html page with javascript can force a crash, if written wrong, so can a poorly written Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX or plain old Java applet.

2nd, seriously look into what is causing Flash to crash. What version are you on and does it happen on every single piece of Flash content you view? I doubt it but if it does you might want to look into your browser, as Jason and DB suggested.

Will Flash crash your browser? Sure…it happens. Firefox crashes due to long running processes (on Mac) WITHOUT Flash more than Flash has ever crashed any system or browser I’ve used. I develop on a Mac and test in both FF and Safari. Neither crash unless I wrote a horrible loop or something that hangs it.

It just seems odd such a blog post exists without really looking into the issue and so many fanboys followed suit. Notice how everyone is on Safari and crashing (not Firefox)? Maybe I should fanboy against Safari since both browsers are using the same plugin. I guess since Apple built it the thing glows and is perfect. hehe. :-)

To clarify a few points from comments:
- Silverlight doesn’t need to grow to compete. It is competing right now and ready for prime time.
- Flash isn’t going away.
- Flash is not just eye-candy for FWA.

the latest version of flashplayer simply doesnt work in safari. you have to downgrade to version 9. get the uninstaller from adobe’s website and i believe there’s an archive for previous version installers.

I feel your “Flash” pain! I always get You Tube lagging and is because of Flash. In case you ask, I use Windows. But now I’m considering buying a new computer, because is a computer issue or a Flash issue involved and I can’t watch all the You Tube videos that are entering the system. Yet, I can still watch older videos (Over 6 months back!), so where in the same boat called “Flashtanic!”

Hmm weird. I have not yet experienced this. I’m running the latest OS + the latest Flash plug in and latest version of Safari. I also use Firefox a lot. My company develops websites and multimedia and there is a long list of things we can complain about with the sucktastic way Flash is programmed but so far haven’t experienced this.

If you have issues, why not just use Firefox when you know you’re going to be viewing Flash content?

It can be a bitch on the PC side too. It was never that way until Adobe aquired it. Adobe can screw things up in record time once they get their hands on something. Their pukey PS fonts is another irrate hot spot for me!

Ditch the Mac. Flash works fine in Internet Explorer.

It’s not just Adobe for Mac, it’s Adobe for any platform. Flash crashes IE 8 as well as Firefox 3.

I have a quad core system with 8 Gb of ram running Vista Home Premium 64 bit on one of my drives. It frustrates me to no end that Adobe can’t release a 64 bit plugin for IE 8 or Firefox 3. What good is a 64 bit version of IE 8 if half the web is encoded in some form of Flash.

It goes on and on and on…

just install the latest flash update.

What makes you think that Adobe products are just a problem with Mac OS-X? ;^)

If only it were simple crashes to deal with…

The craptasticy of Adobe has become rather egregious in the last six months. The time spent doing security updates for wide open barn door sized exploitable software flaws has had me about ready to apply a GPO to our network that would lock out Flash and if I could dump it, eliminate Acrobat Reader from our network. My web design department has choice words to say about their web editing solutions.

for those having issues with Flash under Windows, its not Flash thats the problem, i’m on Windows and over the last few years i’ve yet to run into any real issue with flash, i don’t think its crashed my browser in years, not in recent memory anyway

using Firefox 3.0.10 and still, zero issues, i however do not like Adobes Air Platform, its utter garbage, the apps are useful but entirely too buggy and resource hungry for what some of them do

i would like to see some Silverlight app action soon to compete with Air

Sorry I didn’t see this the week it appeared. It should be easy to fix.

As John Bland noted above, if the problem only occurs on one page, then check that page.

(For instance, Chris, your page here calls out to over 30 external tracking domains making over 200 HTTP requests and downloading a megabyte of media and JavaScript — the third-party JavaScript you’re loading has slowed my Firefox to a crawl. Content choices have consequences!)

But if you’re seeing a general problem with Adobe Flash Player, then use the uninstaller on the website to clean out that damaged version, and do a fresh install — gets Flash itself back to a known, predictable state.

It should be easy to have successful, peaceful experiences like other people do.

jd/adobe

well, I’m not a Flash user but like everybody I browse the internet, and it happens a lot to my Safari to crash in some websites that contain some SWF contents, and it get worse when I have too many tabs open at the same time.

I agree with the first half of John’s advice: uninstall Flash. However, unless you’ve committed yourself irrevocably to a site which won’t work without it, I would avoid reinstalling Flash, or at least keep an entirely separate user account and browser install with Flash just for those sites if you absolutely must.

There are many other reasons to uninstall Flash for good, namely that it is not an open standard, and that Adobe has made a mockery of the term “open standard” by mislabeling its release of the proprietary, NDA clickwrapped Flash specification as such.

It is a shame watching the better part of two decades’ worth of work by Tim Berners-Lee and the W3C go down the drain by yet another Flash movie served over HTTP in place of a Web site.

Wow, what a bunch of old, crotchety Flash haters. “When I was your age we had text-only web sites…blah blah blah”. Is anyone commenting not an AARP member? Good luck waiting for Silverlight, as if that dog will hunt. Quit blaming Flash when your shit-ass Safari browser is the problem, and get your self checked into a “I run a Mac and I have a chip on my shoulder” group therapy session. OOPS! That’s what this blog is, isn’t it?

Having the same problems in Kubuntu with Firefox.
Adobe hasn’t even tried to get Flash in Konqueror.

Every time I try to use the Flash plugin, it crashes. Gnash doesn’t have sound, and Amarok, Gnash, and Flash all seem to fighting over ALSA, which is being emulated by Pulseaudio or something.

There’s just too much shit going on and I have no fucking clue what’s even wrong.

Why the hell can’t people just use normal videos like AVI or MPEG or Theora?

Then I could actually fucking watch them instead of fiddling with Flash all fucking day.

Get pc.

I’ve never had a single crash because of Flash…it is likely another add-on causing the conflict. Chris, for a “techy” with a “tech” blog, you sure don’t know how to troubleshoot worth a shit.

Instead of crying like a baby because safari sucks ballz, try doing something about it like troubleshooting the issue or using another browser. Just cause crapfari says it is all flash’s fault, doesn’t necessarily mean it is.

God you’re an idiot.

As a flash developer, I know the virtues (or lack thereof) of the platform up close and personal, and I have to support the original statement. Flash is mediocrity wrapped in a colorful box.

I won’t go into technical detail, but the Flash compiler can be regarded as one of the worst — to the degree of ‘forgetting’ about its own built-in types or not catching obvious errors.

Yes, I know it puts food on the table. Yes, I know it should be grateful. But no moral truism will change the fact that it’s nowhere near as solid as it should be, specially considering all the money Adobe makes out of it.

Flash is evil. That is why:

1. Flash is too slow on old hardware.

2. Flash doesn’t work with many software from the opensource world.

3. Flash is a proprietary piece of software.

4. Flash is buggy

Every time I watch large flash video on my MacBook, the CPU goes up, the machine heats up a lot, and the fans kick on at a high rpm. Seriously, adobe, why does flash have to be such a resource hog? Even a flash based ad on a site causes safari to go to the top of the proccesses list.

Flash? Either you love it or hate it. It has all the bells and whistles. But knowing when and where to use it on a website …. some people are all to eager to stick flash EVERYTHERE. It gets to the point where it is annoying. The same can be said for pop-up windows or … shiver me timbers … JAVA ! There are coders who know their stuff and then there are the wannabes … maybe there should be some kind of test you have to pass before you put just any old thing up on the internet. Nuff said.

It’s not only with Mac OS X… or Safari, or Mozilla or Explorer… it’s Adobe Flash the guilty thing, and I agree with all the frustrated users. No matter what browser or system I use, Flash-based *ads* make my session freeze and I have to quit whatever application I’m using. Yes, I hate the way adobe flash causes to slow down or freeze so many web sessions. I wonder if adobe gurus are aware of it.

I totally agree! Could some please hit the developers in Adobe on their head. Do they have any product that is not a piece of shit. Luckily there are now some goooood pdf witers. Hope we will have a flash replacement soon.

I feel your pain Mac users, Adobe also treats us Linux users like second class citizens. If it weren’t for the fact that flash dominates the web, I’d dump Adobe like I dumped Microsoft. Seems if you are not a Microwh*re and an Adobefreak you’re not allowed to use the web! grrrrrrrr

yes i think adobes flash player is total crap ever tried playing a youtube video and got the message an error occured please try again later………thats shitty flash and it gets even worse if your on 64 bit programs just total shite and yes lets all smack the wanker round the face that created it, is there no alternative to adobes flash player that will play youtube vids???

I can just agree. Flash sucks big time. Running ubuntu karmic koala and flash in firefox claims near all my CPU power. The only solution is to install flash blocker and turn it on for speciell needs.