Google blames Flash for hobbling Chrome, says it sucks (too much power) If you reckon Chrome is eating up your laptop's battery, you're not alone. Google is concerned, too, but it says it's not all its fault – Adobe's to blame. Specifically, the culprit is the Adobe Flash plugin that comes built into Chrome and which automatically displays any Flash content it finds on web pages, according to …
With my deeply cynical hat on, I'd wonder whether Google are actually going to sneak out a fix for the Chrome memory issue at the same time as this release; then, when Chrome performance improves after this fix rolls out, they can let it be known 'off the record' that it was obviously the Flash issue was the real cause of Chrome's performance issues all along ...
The option to not play Flash until you click on it has been available on Chromebooks for ages. The config option is not exactly obvious, but you can google for instructions. I searched for it when my daughter complained about Flash games not running smoothly, which was, of course, caused by all the Flash advertisement running on the same page.
Uninstalling Flash wouldn't be noticed, Chrome has its own Flash runtime so doesn't rely on it. I run Flashblock in chrome , it was one of the first extensions I installed, and Chrome is still a power and memory hog, so doubt it'll help. I read it's down to the code base not using native performance enhancements, so it grabs memory etc to do its stuff.
So run on a Chromebook and it's great as it's built for it, (even my 2gb samsung does well). Worst machine was the developer work laptop I had, quad core i7, 16gb, 1tb ssd, running chrome would require me to bring up task manager to kill other tasks that had become zombie as chrome was using 12gb of memory to display gmail in 1 tab.
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OK, so Flash isn't exactly a saint, but come on! Max out an i7 with 16GB using just Gmail? Then there's no hope for my Core 2 Q9450 with only 8GB, then, is there (hint: I can access Gmail just fine).
The first question one must ask of any "Throw It Out!" detractor MUST be, "And replace it with WHAT?" And tell them going without is NOT an option.
So for those who say to abandon Flash, I ask: What can you replace it with that isn't as bulky, slow, and security-vulnerable? Silverlight's in the same boat, JavaScript has plenty of holes in it, and Java's not considered trustworthy in the browser anymore. Frankly, ANYTHING else you could use will be vulnerable for the very simple reason that it requires LOCAL operation. And ANYTHING local can be subverted, privilege-escalated, and used to pwn you.
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@JimmyPAge
No, sadly it's not. And unfortunately for me, I can't uninstall it: the payroll company (paychex .com) that my company outsources to *REQUIRES* Flash to use its website. Without Flash, all that the website displays (after login) is a banner at the top with not so much as a link to anything. Perhaps using Flash means not having to test their website with more than their favourite browser.
I think the old setting of click-to-play was the best.
Now if you're a developer you have to figure out whether chrome is going to relegate your flash to 'inessential'. This is the kind of thing Microsoft used to do with IE. 'Enhance' the user experience at the expense of standards.
Now if IBM hadn't had it's collective head up it's collective a$$, we could have been using HotMedia (java-based) rather than Flash for all that media stuff. So then we'd only have to be dealing with Java's bloat and vulnerabilities rather than Java and Flash's bloat and vulnerabilities at the same time.
Except most people have ABANDONED Java at this point. Plenty have declared it to be hopelessly vulnerable at the browser and say if you're going to use it, use it for applications only.
Which means either/or. We EITHER use Java's bloat and vulnerabilities OR Flash's bloat and vulnerabilities. OR we end up using something else that is necessarily vulnerable and gets bloated before long.
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