Flash content is slowly being driven away by advancements in HTML 5 and CSS 3 (insert "Hallelujah" fanfare here). Unfortunately, Flash is still a neccessity to use certain websites. YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo are all offenders, and until the aformentioned new methods of web design are fully implemented, we'll have to accept Flash is still here to stay.
But there's a safe workaround that can keep Flash from overtaking your computer's memory and crashing during every instance. We'll show you how to avoid some of these crashes by disabling Flash in the Safari browser.
>> Safari 5 or higher
>> ClickToFlash
>> YouTube5
ClickToFlash is an interesting extension that blocks Flash content from any page. In areas where Flash content is supposed to appear, you'll instead see the words "Flash". Clicking on this button will load the Flash content for the area that you clicked on.
Using this plug-in minimizes page loading times, and, of course, doesn’t automatically load Flash content when you open a new page. This can help out with the CPU usage and battery life, among other things.
After installing Click to Flash, navigate to Safari > Preferences > Extensions > ClickToFlash. Once there, click the “Enable ClickToFlash” checkbox to enable the extension.
One of the preferences that you may wish to configure is the whitelists section, which lets you specify a list of websites that can pre-load their own Flash content.
YouTube and Vimeo have stepped up their efforts with HTML 5 video, but their sites will still default to playing Flash-based content. Mimicking the QuickTime Player UI, the YouTube5 extension is a very nicely built extension that will force YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook to automatically load HTML 5 / H.264 versions of the video that is stored on their website.
After installing the extension, navigate to Safari > Preferences > Extensions > YouTube5. Once there, ensure that the checkbox labeled “Enable YouTube5” is checked.
There are several options that you can choose from, from autoplaying YouTube videos to selecting the default video format on YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook. The nice thing is that you can choose to enable or disable the HTML 5 video player for each of the sites individually, so if you don’t want to use it only on Facebook, you don’t have to.
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ilikeimac
March 21, 2011 at 3:51pm
Thanks for covering this! I use YouTube5 and used to use ClickToFlash, till I decided to become an anti-Flash martyr and remove Flash from Safari completely. I'm currently following John Gruber's recommendation and launching Chrome if I really need Flash. (daringfireball.net/2010/11/flash_free_and_cheating_with_google_chrome)
P.S. Last I checked, MacLife's own videos (like the ones from MacWorld 2011) play fine on iOS devices, but in a Flash-less desktop Safari you get the "Flash plug-in required" non-sense. Set Safari's user agent to "iOS" though and you get great HTML5 video. Any chance y'all will fix this? Flash-free pages aren't just for iPhones.
