The way that MacromediaFlash is now abused on Web pages, I have been looking for a simple solution.  Especially since the sleazy ad tracking sector has coupled with MacroMedia to annoy the living daylights out of us all.  I have used manual means with my browsers in the past, but now I have found what I feel is a much better solution.  A little JavaLanguage jar file that renames the offending files automatically, so now I can turn Flash on or off at will.  The author has even given instructions on his Web site to turn off and on the updating feature of Flash so that it will not complain and want to re-download when surfing with Flash turned off.  It works great!

Browser independent, and OS independent available also.

jTFlash''''''Manager

http://www.jtedley.com/jtflashmanager/

Source code freely and readily available.

quote from readme file:
	 :	"How it works:  jTFlashManager started as a testing tool for websites. I needed an easy way to test Flash-based sites with Flash turned at various times on or off. The first advice I got was to uninstall Flash/remove the plugins, but uninstalling/reinstalling got to be painful. I found the plugin files on my machine and copied it elsewhere. That worked, but was still, too time-consuming. Then I got the bright idea of renaming the plugins, so the browsers couldn't find them. I did that for a while, but still too slow.Then I wrote 10 lines of command-line java code that would rename them. That's how jTFlashManager works -- it just renames the file back and forth when you turn Flash on or off."

''Pref''''''Bar for MozillaFirefox and MozillaBrowser (http://prefbar.mozdev.org/) has a Flash toggle as well, which doesn't involve any file renaming as far as I can tell.''

Is this the same as FireFox's "Flashblock" add-on? I use it all the time. It displays a place-holder that you can click on to run Flash. It works pretty well, except that it doesn't work right on a few sites. Thus, I switch to IE when I want to see Flash on those exception sites. (FireFox is my Puritan browser and IE is my hooker browser.) CNN's videos are such an exception. -top

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jTFlash''''''Manager seems to work great for IE! :)  Hey, it works really great and is very easy to set up!  Thanks!

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Privoxy (http://www.privoxy.org) is a well-known general purpose filter for web pages, which includes easy options to disable showing (and downloading) of flashes.

NoScript add-on for Firefox, too.
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I use Toggle Flash for this... http://flash.melameth.com.  Works very well.

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CategoryWebBrowser