I give Adobe's Flash Player a one-star (out of five) rating, because Software Informer does not permit "no-star" ratings! Surely I am not the only person who has noticed that Adobe is constantly releasing new versions of Flash Player and Adobe Reader to patch security vulnerabilities and bugs! When I reach a site that requires Flash Player, Task Managers shows that Firefox suddenly needs much more RAM.
Flash Player -- whether I am using the ActiveX version for Internet Explorer or the DLL/add-on for Firefox -- causes a discernable bottlelneck my (broadband) Internet connection (via a gigabit LAN).
Because Adobe refuses to make its specifications available -- and obviously will not be releasing any source code -- end users seem content to continue downloading and using this bloated, unstable, security risk (and apparently have been deceived into believing that Flash content is a "Web standard" and that Flash Player is a required plug-in for every Web browser).
I cannot recall the last time that I encountered Flash content that served a useful purpose (and just because a Web designer chooses to create the interface for an entire Web site in FLV and or SWF format without offering an X/HTML alternative version -- which was standard etiquette in the early 1990s -- making the site inaccessible to visually impaired users or individuals without (often, the most current release of) Flash Player -- and/or dial-up access that lacks the bandwidth to handle often huge Web pages that might cause Flash Player to generate errors and might even cause a Web browser crash.
I have downloaded the Windows port of Gnash (version 0.8.7), the free and open-source alternative to Flash Player, which obviously is not a "drag-and-drop replacement" for Flash Player, but Gnash is a top-priority GNU/Free Software Foundation project and I would rather use the time I waste with Flash Player -- monitoring security alerts and downloading the latest patched version -- using Gnash and helping contribute to the project.
Flash Player -- whether I am using the ActiveX version for Internet Explorer or the DLL/add-on for Firefox -- causes a discernable bottlelneck my (broadband) Internet connection (via a gigabit LAN).
Because Adobe refuses to make its specifications available -- and obviously will not be releasing any source code -- end users seem content to continue downloading and using this bloated, unstable, security risk (and apparently have been deceived into believing that Flash content is a "Web standard" and that Flash Player is a required plug-in for every Web browser).
I cannot recall the last time that I encountered Flash content that served a useful purpose (and just because a Web designer chooses to create the interface for an entire Web site in FLV and or SWF format without offering an X/HTML alternative version -- which was standard etiquette in the early 1990s -- making the site inaccessible to visually impaired users or individuals without (often, the most current release of) Flash Player -- and/or dial-up access that lacks the bandwidth to handle often huge Web pages that might cause Flash Player to generate errors and might even cause a Web browser crash.
I have downloaded the Windows port of Gnash (version 0.8.7), the free and open-source alternative to Flash Player, which obviously is not a "drag-and-drop replacement" for Flash Player, but Gnash is a top-priority GNU/Free Software Foundation project and I would rather use the time I waste with Flash Player -- monitoring security alerts and downloading the latest patched version -- using Gnash and helping contribute to the project.