Chorome has Flash Player built-in, but the plug-in must be enabled in.Going Flash-Free on Mac OS X, and How to Cheat When You Need It Thursday, 4 November 2010In Safari, choose Window > Downloads. The latest released version is 0.8.5, download it from here.Original question: How do I allow Adobe Flash Player on a Mac It depends on the browser. Current status Lightspark is still in alpha state, it currently implements around 79 of the Flash APIs. It aims to support all of Adobe's Flash formats. Lightspark is an LGPLv3 licensed Flash player and browser plugin written in C++/C that runs on Linux and Windows.Note : If the Flash Player installer window does not appear, choose Go > Desktop in the Finder.Last week I mentioned that, following Steven Frank’s lead, I’d completely disabled Flash Player on my Mac. But I have a cheat, for web pages with Flash content with no non-Flash workaround. To open the uninstaller, double-click it in the Downloads window. In Mozilla, choose Tools > Downloads.
Does I Use Adobe Flash Player Free On MacThat sounds pedantic, perhaps, but bear with me. The original ClickToFlash is a plugin, not an extension. Previously, I used and recommended the excellent ClickToFlash plugin for Safari. For Mac OS X was accused as a source of potential threat to its users. Safari extensions are the things Apple lists here, and which you manage via the Extensions tab in Safari’s preferences window. They’re written using JavaScript (and HTML and CSS for presentation, if they present a user interface). These Safari extensions are much like Firefox extensions. ![]() It’s a kludge, but it works well, and I’ll bet many of you are using it.Confusion sets in when you see that there also exists a “ClickToFlash” extension for Safari 5 — a project by Marc Hoyois that duplicates most of the features of the ClickToFlash plugin using the new extension API instead of the long-standing plugin API. Thus, Flash Player is there, and works, but it only loads after the user clicks on a Flash content box to load it. If the user clicks that box, ClickToFlash hands the content over to the actual Flash Player plugin. Instead of actually loading the Flash content, ClickToFlash instead draws a box with a nice little “Flash” logo. (ClickToFlash, if you have it installed, might be in the Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ folder in your home folder, rather than at the root level of your startup drive.)After logging out and logging back in to my user account, Flash Player is no longer available to Safari or Firefox. I also moved ClickToFlash (“ClickToFlash.webplugin”) to this disabled plugins folder. All you need to do to disable them is move them out of /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. I moved “Flash Player.plugin”, “flashplayer.xpt”, and “NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave” out of that folder and into a new folder I created next to it named “Internet Plug-Ins (Disabled)”. On my system, Flash Player was in the default location: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/. ![]() Cheating With Google ChromeBut that doesn’t mean I never run into Flash content I wish to view but for which there is no HTML5 alternative. It also means that the Flash plugin never gets loaded into other non-browser apps that happen to use WebKit — eliminating the number one source of crashes for many of these apps. I prefer it over my previous setup using the ClickToFlash plugin because Flash Player is never left running in the background because of a background Safari web page on which I clicked to load Flash content hours (or even days) ago. This is possible because behind the scenes, all YouTube videos are encoded using H.264.For the vast majority of my surfing, this new setup works great. With this extension installed, embedded YouTube videos are modified to use the HTML5 video tag rather than Flash Player for playback. I see far fewer “Flash missing” boxes in web pages now than I did with ClickToFlash.As per Frank’s recommendation, I’ve installed the excellent YouTube5 Safari extension by Connor McKay. Windows password unlocker for mac crackUsing the Keyboard Shortcuts section in System Preferences, I set a custom menu key shortcut for the command to open the current page in Google Chrome. (It’s a checkbox in the “Advanced” panel of Safari’s preferences window.) The Develop menu contains an “Open Page With” sub-menu, which lists all the web browsers you have installed on your system. First, if you haven’t done so already, enable Safari’s Develop menu. As soon as I’m done watching it, I quit Chrome, which ensures Flash Player isn’t left running in the background.I’ve also added a shortcut for opening the current Safari page in Chrome quickly. Removing Flash Player from /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/ prevents Safari and Firefox (and almost all other Mac web browsers) from loading Flash content, but not Chrome.So, whenever I hit a page with Flash content I wish to view, I open that page in Chrome. As of today, there are significant performance and battery life gains to be had by disabling Flash Player on Mac OS X. The Coming of HTML5 Animated AdsWhenever I mention the performance and battery life gains to be had by disabling Flash Player (like this eye opener from yesterday), I get a few responses via email and Twitter pointing out that if advertisers switch to HTML5 from Flash for obnoxious animated ads, those performance gains may vanish, and, perhaps worse, it won’t be as easy to block unwanted HTML5 animation in this hypothetical future as it is to block unwanted Flash animation today, because HTML5 isn’t rendered through a specific plugin.My answer: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The easiest solution is to use this AppleScript from TJ Luoma. (Hint: when you create the custom shortcut, and are asked for the name of the menu item, just use “Google Chrome” or “Google Chrome.app” (whichever appears in your Open Page With sub-menu).)Update, 14 March 2011: Safari 5.0.4 changed the Develop menu a bit, breaking the above instructions.
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