the lingering 100% CPU flash joke of firefox
i finally converted to firefox last year because it worked so much better with blogger.com, even though i liked IE6 just fine. but even on my semi-bitching computer, firefox was often killing the entire system whenever on a page with flash. even minimized, the CPU would stay at 100%, locking up everything except for a brief respite every 20 seconds or so. even giving it a low priority from task manager barely helped. [if you don't want to hear me bitch anymore about this, skip to the next to last paragraph for the solution.]goddamned disaster, and i still have trouble believing even software as old as windows 2000 allows a program to lock the OS. about the only unreal pissoff from microsoft that gets me hotter is when it lets a program steal focus. programs should never steal focus. when i'm in full bitchfest swing, i hit the 130 WPM range. nothing on a computer pisses me off like when i'm typing like crazy, a window pops up, and i happen to be in the middle of word with an accelerator key in it (or even just the spacebar). a major reason i stopped using MS outlook was because it would fuck away important reminders by the dozens with this inane crap. getting pissed off just thinking about it. what the fuck stupid bastard would ever allow a critical message to steal focus and then be obliterated because you're typing. that once-in-a-lifetime task you needed to hit on the one? oh, it's fucked away because the reminder stole focus, and you'll never know what it was unless you go on a 5-hr research binge. bullshit!. LOL. i mean, this really pisses me off. WTF?
okay, enough of that. here's the important part. IMDb, where i hang out for too long every day (often with >20 tabs active), was zapping me into the lock zone because of all the flash animation, even with only one flash page up. hell, almost any major news page would do it. still have no idea why firefox hasn't fixed this shit, but they haven't. i'm using 1.5.0.5, and it's as bad as ever (along with the usual memory creep thing, but that doesn't bother me as much, since i just close it every day or so — sometimes more).
so i finally googled the problem, and within a few minutes had found this — FlashBlock from mozdev.org. installation took a couple of tweaks, but they were well explained and painless. it's a small install. upon restarting, i now have a flashproof firefox, and am kicking myself because i didn't look into it months ago. oh well.
CPU-hungry firefox slogging your system? FlashBlock, baby. no more slow firefox. each flash thingy becomes a simple logo, which can be clicked if you want it to load. beautiful. thanks, mozdev.org!
Labels: firefox
posted by saltypig @ 00:19
Yeah, flashblock is the only solution to this problem, and it's not even a real solution. It just stops flash loading by default, so you don't "accidentally" get two or more flash progs running (which are usually ads) and racing out the CPU to %100.
Macromedia/Adobe have always done a pretty crappy job with flash, and it's even worse in Firefox. I just got hit with a Flash Exploit (flash player 8) that installed spyware on the computer through firefox. It was a bitch to clean out, and now has left my firefox/flash totally unstable. No matter how many uninstall/manually delete/reinstall sof both firefox and the flash pluggin I do, it won't stay stable. Youtube or any other flash items will lock up about 1/3rd of the time.
ouch. i wrote about flashblock at IMDb after installing, and some tool was telling me i screwed up by not using "ad block" or something like that instead. i love flashblock. does exactly what i wanted, painlessly.
good luck unfucking yer 'puter. always a drag.
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