I’ve taken to using two wonderful Safari extentions; YouTube5 and Broken Box. The first forces all videos from YouTube into their HTML5 versions, including embedded videos. The second prevents any Flash portions of websites from loading, simulating the absence of Flash entirely.
Embedded YouTube videos is probably the main reason I still even have Flash, because it is kind of nice to play a video without leaving the page you’re on. Now, I don’t even need it for that.
I actually became almost addicted to Flashless-Browsing from using the iPhone and iPad; not having those god-awful, noisemaking ads and other assorted crap that makes a page needlessly take forever to load was a breath of fresh air. I tried uninstalling Flash entirely a year or two ago, but found that there were still a few holdout things I needed it for. Broken Box was a nice compromise; no Flash items load unless I specifically want them to.
We’re at the point now where Flash is starting to become irrelevant, a relic in the same vein as RealAudio. Those who cling to it for video are simply incompetent, as there’s no reason for it. Those who use it for layout are lazy. The only real valid use for it is content-rich applications that don’t require additional plugins, though in many cases, another plug-in may be a far better answer. There’s just no compelling reason to keep it around from both a user and developer standpoint. It’s time to kill it off.
I give it another six months and I suspect I won’t need to even have it installed anymore. I, for one, can’t wait.
