The Solution to Flash: A Modest Proposal
Many folks have been voicing their concerns about Adobe’s Flash player plugin. Without it, there would be no advertising on the Internet. We could play phenomenally fun games written in Javascript, and all our video would be delivered via HTML5. And finally, FINALLY, our whirring laptop fans would be quieted, and our computers would only ever use 1% CPU power … which means we could save a ton of money by buying less powerful computers. Happy day!
Many of you have only taken the first step to ridding your life of Flash by installing the ClickToFlash browser plugin, which promises to “rid the web of the scourge that is Adobe Flash, but still retain the ability to view Flash whenever you want”. But who in their right mind would even want to see Flash content?? What self-respecting disciple of latter-day web browsing would smugly point out in web forums that “i use ClickToFlash”, when the answer is not less Flash – it’s no Flash.
Let’s face it: Flash has had its day. It was a GREAT technology for 1987, but we’ve moved on. We have touch interfaces now, and there’s no way that such a decrepit technology could ever keep up.
Touch interfaces, people. It’s the friggin’ future.
Why be content with apartheid when genocide is readily available? The final solution to the Flash question is not to merely quarantine Flash, but to completely eradicate it from your system.
The answer has been front of our noses all along, buried in an Adobe tech note: How to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player plug-in and ActiveX control. Just follow those simple instructions, and you won’t have to worry about Flash ever again! You’ll be able to enjoy that idyllic web paradise foretold by futurists and sages for time immemorial.
Enjoy!
Popularity: 2% [?]
(5 votes, average: 2.60 out of 5) 
Loading ...
Email This Post
Our Feeds 
I gotta say, I really enjoy your posts!
Us, Flash developers, may understand the sarcasm in this post.
But I fear that other people may think that you’re serious :)
Daniel – i’m amazed i can even manage subtlety at this point – it’s not exactly my strong suit. i hope the enormous WE MAKE FLASH GAMES masthead at the top of the site will tip people off. :)
I think the real solution is found in the movie Children of Men – Quietus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYy80trSPSI
FANTASTIC idea, Jobe. Instead of killing Flash, why not just kill yourself? Then you won’t have to worry about technology disappointing you ever again.
Now that I’ve eaten all of the Flash babies, there is nothing left but silverlight.
I will have to beg my children for forgiveness and explain to them that they cannot reach their favorite children’s educational websites because it is all for the greater good. Because I believe in Steve.
Paolo – that would make a great button slogan.
People ahould really buy this http://02d9656.netsoljsp.com/SarcMark/modules/user/commonfiles/loadhome.do
That said has anyone actually tried to use the internet next to shopping sites without flash installed :P might broke, I can’t visit ever site, but I checked all my most common 50 and other than a few here and there, I got alot of emptyness and install flash plugin messages.
I can sense a big mud fight emerging from this :(
Steve Jobs just wants his app store monopoly, that’s all there is to it.
I have a strong feeling that Adobe will just create a method to cross compile to HTML5. They already adopted ECMAscript for AS3, which was a REALLY SMART MOVE.
Meanwhile, all examples of HTML5 i’ve seen are CPU guzzlers and some peg my CPU at 100% just for simple tasks. Due to the lack of a frame timer, you will see even worse JS code in HTML5. Ad blocking will be far more difficult…
Ask and you shall recieve…. something that is far worse.
Hm, dunno about this post. Yeah, its meant to be ironic or sarcastic but it shows why we´re in this mess now very well:
-Adobe is not reacting propperly at all (neglecting all problems instead of addressing them properly for many years)
-Apple and others in return completely blocking flash
-People who´ve always hated flash and are liars or ill informed touting html5 is ready and can now replace flash in all areas just fine so flash should better be completely replaced with html5 today rather than tomorrow
-People who were avid flash supporters either get pissed off by Apple or other people loudly talking about flash´s downsides and then react with anger, irony or sarcasm in many cases ending with flaming others or saying: well, if you think all is awesome without flash then just don´t use it.
Why does everything have to be black and white? Why can´t one use a technology for what its useful for but also openly and honestly talk about where alternatives are a better choice or where a technology should and has to be improved?
I think all went downhill when the term Evangelist was started to get used for tech stuff, because hey, forming a religion just to have religion flame wars helps noone.
In reality, of course those (many) problems flash has of course have to be addressed by Adobe sooner than later for the tone of get rid of flash not getting the voice of the majority soon.
And also to be real: to put it straight: no, html5 is on most platforms and browser (version)s not yet ready and even if it was well implemented on all of the most used browsers still one can do many things with flash one can´t do with html 5.
But yeah, besides that i also think its reasonable that thanks to Adobe´s stance on all of flash´s problems (their stance seems to be ignoring/ lying) one should seriously reconsider with every project whether flash is still a good choice for it or maybe rather something else is more fitting in that case.
On the >desktop< web for some things flash still is the best choice, for others html+js is enough,for others silverlight could be a good choice, for others unity3d could be a better choice (especially where flash´s performance just doesn´t cut it), for mobile device´s one could think about going html 5 way for browser content or think about whether there a native app made in a middleware that leads to well performing apps that can also use all the device/sdk features isn´t a better choice in that case.
I always ‘lol’ when I read these type of posts, keeps me coming back!
I don’t have to follow any instructions for removing Flash. Adobe did that for me when they stopped support RHEL 4. I haven’t had flash on my home computer ever since Adobe thought they could issue an update against a GLIBC module that isn’t on RHEL 4, but RHEL 5. And Flash on RHEL 5 will bomb out completely at random, so many times the ads on Web pages won’t play because Flash died. “The day the Flash-module died….”
Andrew – if i new what you were talking about, i might be able to empathize.
The future?
That’s ridiculous, everyone knows it’s not the future until we have flying cars!
Funny, Steve Job’s statements of needing to “cleanse” the internet from this horrid disease that is Flash which is the #1 security threat and damage to the MAC reminds me of someone else…
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/statements.htm