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Disabling Flash in the Browser?
fishdan asks: "I know there are a few tools for selectively disabling flash in IE, but there is currently nothing in Mozilla. I'm wondering how many people have just removed Flash (as I have) by deleting the appropriate files? I find it greatly enhances my web experience, and on the very few cases when i think there is something worth seeing in Flash, I'll check it out on someone else's computer. I know someone is working on a 'disable flash from this site' for Moz X.x.x, but I'm wondering what people are doing now? I'm also actively advising people I know to remove Flash because of the lack of control for it on the users end. Short of deleting Flash, there's nothing uses can do to to stop those irritating ads. I don't mind the moderate ones, but the excessive ads are enough for me to throw the baby out with the bath-water."
Under the applications screen in your preferences. Flash is listed along with every other file that uses an external app. Just delete the association completely or edit the properties to prompt before running.
Am I missing something here?
Liberty in your lifetime
I completely agree. I hate flash. I didn't install it for the longest time, but there's just too much out there, so I gave in.
:)
However, I have a solution. I found these wonderful little "bookmarklets" that work in mozilla. Find them here.
They are little javascript things that remove annoyances from pages, including blink text, javascript, embedded event handles, and even colored backgrounds and text, and background music.
The one you want is called "zap embeds". It will kill all flash from the page you are looking at, leaving almost everything else intact. You can also use the vanilla "zap" which zaps Flash and some other stuff.
I personally put a few of these in my personal toolbar. It's the first good use I found for that toolbar. Thus, one click away from killing flash on any page!
IMHO, the perfect solution. Whoever wrote these is my saviour. Everyone should get these.
Just like you, I removed the library file. However, if you'd like to turn it on and off, I'd suggest a simple solution. Rename the library (maybe libflash.so ?). Then, when you find a page where you want it to work, add a symlink to the library.
After I removed the file, I found that in most cases I didn't want or need it. If the few cases where I did, I just used netscape instead of my uisual mozila.
Have you read my journal today?
www.privoxy.org
Privoxy will disable Flash. It will also let you add sites to a whitelist for the few sites that you do want to see flash on.
my Linksys 4-port Cable/DSL router is easily admindistered with links. Go linksys!
Why not fork?
I have a script that moves the flash plugins in and out of the mozilla plugin directory
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
How to uninstall the Macromedia Flash Player plug-in and ActiveX control
/usr/bin/Netscape/plugins/ (Linux or Solaris).
To manually uninstall the Macromedia Flash Player plug-in (Other browsers, Macintosh and Windows)
1 Quit the browser.
2 Locate the browser application folder on your hard drive.
3 Locate the Plug-ins folder inside the browser application folder.
For example, C:\Program Files\Netscape\plugins\ (Windows), HD:Applications:Netscape:Plugins (Macintosh), or
The exact location of plug-ins folder may vary depending on platform/browser.
4 Locate the Macromedia Flash Player plug-in:
On Windows, the plug-in is named NPSWF32.dll.
On Macintosh, it is called Shockwave-Flash-NP-PPC or Shockwave-Flash-NP-68.
On Linux and Solaris the Macromedia Flash Player consists of two files: libflashplayer.so and ShockwaveFlash.class.
5 Delete the plug-in file.
6 Restart the browser.
Taken from this thread in Mozillazine.
-ms