Blocking Flash in Firefox

Posted on 21 May 2007 by


I have been using Firefox for over a year and I love it. I think the main reason is because of the available extensions. The most recent addition to my list is Flashblock, which does as it suggests and blocks the loading of Flash files. Each flash animation that appears on a website will be displayed with a Flash logo, instead of automatically playing the animation. As I’m sure any long time (or probably even recently-converted) user will tell you that Flash isn’t 100% stable in Firefox. On more than one occasion my browser has crashed on a flash page, on both Mac and PC. Clicking on the Flash logo will play the animation like normal.

flashblock-screenshot.jpg

It also can be setup to allow certain domains to automatically play the animations (eg. YouTube). If you would prefer to have the option to play Flash animations, Flashblock is the way to go.

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- who has written 208 posts on Gear Diary.

Mitchell Oke is a 22 year old Bachelor of Creative Technology (Digital Video Production) from Sydney, Australia. He's previously worked for News Ltd as a Multimedia Producer, and currently works as a freelance editor and videographer. He has a great love for gadgets and cars, always wanting to have the latest and greatest phones, notebooks and other electronic toys. He is a huge fan of Star Trek, Top Gear and Seinfeld, citing them as his favourite TV shows. In December 2006 he became a Mac convert, having used Windows since he was 5.

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  • applejohnney

    I think a better extension for this purpose is Adblock. It not only blocks flash but it also blocks advertisements.

    Plus, it’s selective in what Flash objects are blocked. Some things that are built in flash are useful, but mostly the ads are not. Using Adblock, you can selectively choose what images, flash items, etc, are loaded into your browser by creating different conditions. For example, you can block anything that is placed on the page that contains “*/ads/*” in its URL.

    This way you block the most annoying flash and advertising images w/o blocking the useful ones: i.e. menus/games built in flash, or entire websites built in flash.

    http://adblock.mozdev.org/
    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865