Is there any way to completely ditch Adobe's Flash Player? I am sick and tired of this piece of software that seems to pervade all forms of browsing,now made all the more unwanted after the latest security flaw. I use Opera as my browser and would like to can Adobe Flash Player where it truly belongs.Is there a piece of freeware that I can use with Opera to view Flash images in a webpage? Thanks in advance.
you want to can adobe flash.. but also use it? there's always going to be buffer overflows and security flaws in software.. just takes a clever person to figure it out.. if people could somehow learn to use the uac with windows (I know it's a stretch)- less worries with the latest 0 day stuff
I am fully aware that there are other alternatives to Adobe's all-pervasive Flash Player,which is what I was seeking assistance on to integrate with my current browser.Just as Microsoft Office is the dominant ruler in word processing it does not necessarily mean that it exclusively belongs to Microsoft and that there are no alternatives.Likewise,I'm also looking for an alternative to Adobe.And what is an 'uac' to the uninitiated? A piece of software that regularly gets a panning on security flaws is not exactly a confidence-inducing piece of software,never mind the monopoly issue.
Unfortunately, Flash is a proprietary platform. Viewing and developing for Flash is more or less an Adobe ordeal. There are groups like Smoke Screen who are aiming to recreate Flash elements with HTML5, but that is on the content side. The only hope is for more content creators to switch to HTML5. Even still, there are many things that Flash can do that HTML5 can't. This is actually a big debate going on right now due to Apple. A .SWF file is pretty much a flash file. Unlike Microsoft docs, there is no other Flash player licensed to run on any OS or browsers. To be honest, I have never gotten a bug or hacked or whatnot because of flash. Sure, its a bit bloated, but in this day and age its essential for a complete web experience. Oh, and UAC is think is User Account Control. The Windows security notification that pops up before you make any system changes.
It's only a monopoly because noone else wants to make a Flash player. The specification is open, anyone could theoretically write their own version of Flash player, but they haven't. Regarding the exploit released yesterday, that was a Flash-Acrobat exploit not a Flash-Browser exploit. Your safest response there would be to download an alternative to Adobe Reader, not to Adobe Flash. Remember that every piece of software is somewhat insecure, and the best way to protect against exploits is to not use an administrator account.
To MikeMania and Bakes,that was precisely the kind of help I was looking for.Thank you gentlemen. It was by far the best explantion I have seen about Adobe's Flash anywhere on the web yet.Now,thanks to you two,everything makes sense,and I know where to go from here.Excellent response. I had been recommended to download Flirt yo use as an HTML5 Flash browser add-on which would by-pass Adobe but I could not configure it with Opera,so gave up,as I still could not view Flash-enabled images.
