Another Reason to Hate Flash
I hate Flash. So called “flashturbation” website intro pages, beloved by none but the clueless execs who commission them, is reason enough. Beyond this (useless) use, they are used for everything from animated ads to total website content & navigation. Designers seem to like it because it allows much more creativity in web design, but I’ve never seen a use of flash I couldn’t have lived without. No matter how many ALA articles I see about standards support or accessibility with Flash, I consider it antithetical to both.
So I was not shocked to discover (via brian d foy) that Flash can be used to foil popup blockers. While I have in the past refused to install Flash, on a few occaisions I’ve needed to use a website that was otherwise inaccessible. Of course, once you install it, you’re stuck with it everywhere, right? Not if you use a real browser. Check out Flashblock, a Mozilla/Firefox plugin that replaces all Flash content with a placeholder image, which you can click if you want to enable Flash for the given content.
Maybe people will finally see the light and stop using Flash. One can hope.