The question is what is flash quite popular, so in this article I will answer it.

So, we, as Internet users, are already accustomed to online video, without even thinking about how this is possible, but in fact it was the flash technology that made it possible to realize this possibility.

The technology itself was developed a long time ago by Macromedia, but then this company was absorbed by the larger company Adobe Systems, and therefore this technology is familiar to most users as Adobe Flash.

Adobe Flash technology provides the ability to create multimedia content, that is, information that contains video, audio, text, and animation. There are many specialized programs that create various advertising banners, presentations, games, animated films, etc. All this can be placed on web pages, that is, on the Internet, and then we (users) get the opportunity to listen to audio recordings from web pages, watch online videos or play online games.

Since any computer information is a file of a certain format, then Flash technology has a number of file formats. The standard extension for flash files is .swf(Small Web Format). Flash videos usually have extensions .FLV or .F4V.

It is logical to assume that if there is a file with information, then there must be a program that allows this file to be opened (reproduced). Indeed, there are special programs flash players that are designed to play flash content. There are many such programs, but the most widely used program Adobe Flash Player , from the developer of the flash technology itself. Via Adobe Flash Player you can view animations, videos and run various flash applications directly in your browser from a web page.

Since flash content is currently used on the Internet "at every turn", then a flash player must be installed on every computer, otherwise it will simply be impossible to access this information.

According to statistics, 98% of computers have the program installed Adobe Flash Player, and you may not even be aware of its presence on your computer, since the flash player is already automatically embedded in some browsers, for example, in Google Chrome.

Flash technology provides us with a lot of opportunities, but it is not without its drawbacks.

Firstly, flash content is quite significantly loaded CPU computer, which can manifest itself in some slowdown of the computer as a whole (here, of course, we are talking about not very powerful or not very "young" computers).

Secondly, often flash applications themselves are not without errors, which lead to a crash not only of the application itself, but also to a malfunction of the entire browser in which the flash application was launched.

Thirdly, the widespread use of flash technology attracts the attention of intruders who are looking for various loopholes to use them to penetrate someone else's computer. Vulnerabilities have already been found and fixed that allowed attackers to control, for example, a webcam and microphone on remote computer. That is why it is very important to follow the updates of the flash player and install them regularly, as the updates eliminate the vulnerabilities found and improve the Flash technology itself.

Today we will deal with the topic of flash.

Like availability enabled Flash affect the speed of the browser? The editors of the popular foreign publication pcworld.com became interested in this issue and conducted their own experiment to find out. The results turned out to be even more disappointing than they initially expected: browser speed can drop by 80%!

To begin with, let's figure out what a flash is for in a browser and why many people don't like it so much, and engineers compare it with a sieve for a computer because hundreds of viruses get on users' computers precisely due to holes in the security system of this technology.

A bit of theory

Flash is actively used for, as well as playing audio and video content on website pages. To play flash content, you need Adobe Flash Player installed in your browser. In some browsers it is installed by default, in some it is necessary to install it yourself from the Adobe website.

At its core, Flash Player is a virtual machine that runs the code for a Flash program. In this regard, a number of problems arise:

• Excessive use of PC CPU resources due to inefficiency virtual machine Flash Player
• Poor error control, causing browsers to freeze and even crash
• Hackers exploit security holes to spread viruses and infect computers

The problem of using Flash in browsers has become so acute that in July of this year, the head of the Facebook security department, Alex Stamos, called on Adobe to name the exact date when it would stop further development and support of Flash technology. By the way, immediately after this, Stamos was supported by Firefox developers, stating that fresh versions their browsers will no longer support flash. By the way, even Steve Jobs compared Flash technology with evil :)

Initial data

Now let's get back to the experiment... For it, a sample of 30 sites was taken, from Amazon to The New York Times and PCMag.com, on the pages of which there are flash elements. As "guinea pigs" were used Chrome browsers 44, Microsoft Edge 12 (included with Windows 10), Firefox 39, Internet Explorer 11 and Opera 31.

Since Firefox and Opera do not natively support Flash, the recommended plug-in was downloaded for them from the official Adobe website. Used as a testing platform lenovo laptop Yoga 12 (2.6-GHz Intel Core i7-5600U, 64-bit Windows 10 Pro, 8 GB RAM).

results

The results were surprising even for the experimenters themselves. He originally assumed Negative influence enabled flash on the speed of the browser, but not as much as it turned out. For example, Microsoft Edge consumed 4.72 GB random access memory and created a CPU load of 84.1%. With flash disabled, these figures were 4.12 GB and 24.5%, respectively. Those. the difference in load was 11% for RAM and 61% for the CPU.

Opera showed even more stunning results, as you can see from the chart above. Firefox, after turning on the flash, generally began to behave strangely: the tabs began to freeze for one or more minutes even after loading the pages. Chrome, on the other hand, with Flash running, behaved quite tolerably, but at the same time consumed 4.23 GB of memory and loaded the processor by 71.4%.

Some browsers, the same one, have already come to load flash content on site pages not by default, but at the request of the user. Such content starts playing only after the user himself clicks on it with the mouse and sets the permission. But, for example, Microsoft Edge does not have such functionality: there Flash Player can only be turned on or off through the browser settings. And it seems that the developers at Microsoft are not going to fix this situation, since such tasks are not on the list of the nearest improvements to the browser functionality.

How to disable flash in browsers

If you have a browser with the Flash player already installed and you want to see how fast it will run without it, here's how to disable flash.

Microsoft Edge: Click the circle icon in the upper right corner, “Settings” —> “Advanced Settings”. Move the slider next to "Use Adobe Flash Player" to the "Off" state.

Internet Explorer: Click the gear icon in the upper right corner, select "Configure add-ons". Select "All add-ons" from the drop-down menu. In the list of addons, click on " Shockwave Flash object" right click and select Disable.

Mozilla Firefox: Click the settings icon (three horizontal lines) in the upper right corner, select Add-ons. To the right of the Shockwave Flash plugin, in the drop-down box, select "Never enable".

Google Chrome: Click on the settings icon (three horizontal lines) in the upper right corner, select "Settings", then "Show advanced settings".

In the "Personal data" section, click "Content settings". In the window, find the item "Plugins" and "Manage individual plugins". In the Adobe Flash Player section, click Disable.

Opera: It's a little more complicated here. You need to go to the control panel and go to the list installed programs. In it, find ""Adobe Flash Player PPAPI" and start its removal manually.

Try to work with your browser after disabling flash, and you may be surprised at how quickly and without freezes pages of sites will open. At the very least, you will definitely save the system resources of your computer, and this is an important factor for not very powerful computers.

What is Flash (Adobe Flash)

The question of what is a flush is quite popular, so in this article I will answer it.

So, we, as Internet users, are already accustomed to online video, without even thinking about how this is possible, but in fact it was the flash technology that made it possible to realize this possibility.

The technology itself was developed a long time ago by Macromedia, but then this company was absorbed by the larger company Adobe Systems, and therefore this technology is familiar to most users as Adobe Flash.

Adobe Flash technology provides the ability to create multimedia content, that is, information that contains video, audio, text, and animation. There are a lot of specialized programs with which various advertising banners, presentations, games, animated films, etc. are created. All this can be placed on web pages, that is, on the Internet, and then we (users) get the opportunity to listen to audio recordings from web pages, watch online videos or play online games.

Since any computer information is a file of a certain format, Flash technology also has a number of file formats. The standard extension for flash files is .swf (Small Web Format). Flash videos usually have the extension .FLV or .F4V.

It is logical to assume that if there is a file with information, then there must be a program that allows this file to be opened (reproduced). Indeed, there are special flash player programs that are designed to play flash content. There are many such programs, but the most widely used program is Adobe Flash Player, from the developer of the flash technology itself. With Adobe Flash Player, you can view animations, videos and run various flash applications right in your browser from a web page.

Since flash content is currently used on the Internet "at every turn", then a flash player must be installed on every computer, otherwise it will simply be impossible to access this information.

According to statistics, 98% of computers have Adobe Flash Player installed, and you may not even be aware of its presence on your computer, since the flash player is already automatically built into some browsers, such as Google Chrome.

Flash technology provides us with a lot of opportunities, but it is not without its drawbacks.

Firstly, flash content loads the computer's central processor quite noticeably, which can manifest itself in some slowdown of the computer as a whole (here, of course, we are talking about not very powerful or not very "young" computers).

Secondly, often the flash applications themselves are not without errors, which lead to the crash of not only the application itself, but also to the malfunction of the entire browser in which the flash application was launched.

Thirdly, the widespread use of flash technology attracts the attention of intruders who are looking for various loopholes to use to penetrate someone else's computer. Vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to control, for example, a webcam and microphone on a remote computer, have already been found and fixed. That is why it is very important to follow the updates of the flash player and install them regularly, as the updates eliminate the vulnerabilities found and improve the Flash technology itself.

Another question was sent to me in the comments - what is a flush? Turns out this question very popular on the Internet and I tried to answer it in this article.

Everyone is already accustomed to online video on the Internet and no one is wondering how this became possible. And this was made possible thanks to flash technology. This technology was finalized by Macromedia in the late 1980s, which was subsequently bought by Adobe Systems. That's why many users know this technology like Adobe Flash.

Now, thanks to Adobe Flash technology, it is possible to produce multimedia content (information containing animation, text, audio and video). There are a large number of programs thanks to which you can make various animated films, games, presentations, advertising banners, etc. And all such material created can be posted on various sites on the Internet. Thus, we ordinary users we can play online games, watch online videos, listen to audio recording pages.

Flash technology has a number of formats, however, like any other computer information. Small Web Format (.swf) is the standard extension for flash files. The .F4V are .FLV extensions have flash videos.

Since there are such files with information, there must be a program with which it is possible to play (open) such a file. And in fact, there are such programs - flash players, which are primarily designed to play flash content for the user. There are a lot of these programs, but Adobe Flash Player received the most wide distribution, as it was created by the developers of flash technology. With help Adobe Flash Player you can run various flash applications directly in the browser, view videos and animations.

As you have already noticed, flash content is used everywhere, so in order to access such information, a flash player must be installed on users' computers. If we take usage statistics Adobe Flash Player on users' computers, it will turn out that it occupies 98%. The user may not even suspect that this particular flash player is being used, since it is automatically built into some browsers (Google Chrome).

Cons of Flash technology

1. The widespread use of flash technologies has led to the fact that attackers also began to pay attention to it. They try to find various bugs, entrances to get into the victim's computer. At one time, similar vulnerabilities were found (they have been eliminated today) that allowed the microphone and webcam to be controlled on a remote computer. Therefore, it is always necessary to install on your computer Latest updates which eliminate such vulnerabilities.

2. The computer processor is heavily loaded due to flash content. This leads to the fact that your computer starts to slow down (here I'm talking about old versions of processors or very weak ones).

3. Sometimes, due to the fact that the flash application contains errors, the application closes spontaneously. Sometimes this affects the performance of the web browser in which this application was launched.