What's Flash Player good for?

[prizrak]

All vehicle manufacturer websites use flash for everything and sometimes it's very broken with the Linux version of it. Other sites have flash ads that you put your mouse over and the ad extends, on my machine it's just extended all the time. There are also alot of fun flash animation around that people like to look at in their leisure.
House of Chton (not giving the URL cuz unsure of the spelling) requires Flash8 and from their commercials it's not very aparent what it is. In short alot of online content is done in flash and flash for Linux is not only outdated but not as good as the Windows version. Also as far as I know there is no alternative technology.

[aysiu]

Wait a minute, So then what are ubuntu user's doing to get around this.??

The reason i ask is because i can't get on the internet with mine ( not yet anyway )..

If you can't install flash player, then, how are you supposed to get on those kinds of website's ..???

Or can i install it.??

I don't see what the point of having Flash would be if you can't even get on the internet.

I've had no problems getting on the internet, so I just followed these instructions to get Flash installed:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats

[bored2k]

youtube.com
google video.

[adamkane]

Videodownloader firefox extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2390/

[Rhapsody]

The #1 reason for me to get Flash Player back was Nanaca Crash a highly addictive little game with characters from the eroge game Cross Channel (although Nanaca Crash itself is free from any pornographic material). The best distance I know of is somewhere around the 18000 metre mark (my personal best is about half that). Though it does seem to have some problems on my box under the Linux Flash Player, like sound desyncing (which actually happens on all Flash), screwy sound effects, slight gameplay pauses (also happened under Windows, but not as much), and some animation stopping sometimes. Gameplay logic seems unaffected though, and I just a new personal record (since I know of no way to import my old Windows best) of 5126.12 metres. Feel free to try and beat it.

[jazzmuzik]

I use the FlashBlock Firefox extension. All flash content gets blocked unless you allow it. That way you aren't as annoyed. But I'm with aysiu, I prefer plain old html and css. The trend that worries me is the computer going from an informational/learning/communication device to a brainwashing device like television. You don't need Flash to brainwash, but people do get attracted to moving pictures and pretty colors and Flash makes it more likely that you see and hear stateist fearmongering and basic horseshit.

[Jucato]

Flash cartoons/animation. That's basically the only thing I need flash for. I actually don't like web pages that require you to have Flash. It's pretty inconvenient.

HTML and CSS are of course better ways to present information on the internet. But there might be some cases where those just won't work. Not everybody likes menus in Flash. But not everybody hates them as well. These menus come a bit closer to looking like what you would have on your desktop. Also, some kinds of data or display just won't do with normal HTML/CSS (I think). For example, interactive demos/previews of devices like cellphones. I'm not sure if such a thing would be possible in CSS. (Of course, as my knowledge in HTML and CSS are not so updated, I might be entirely wrong).

Anyway, a site that is entirely, or even 50% made up of Flash feels a bit bulky and heavy on the bandwidth. Even if Flash uses vector-based graphics, some are not entirely vector-based.

But I guess until there comes another, better, and probably (hopefully) open source technology to provide the kind of functions that flash has, we'll be stuck with it and be stuck with hacking around it.

[aysiu]

People have mentioned Adblock and Flashblock.

Just to throw another one in there--I use NoScript, which can block Javascript and Flash.

[Lord Illidan]

I get it for some small games, and those cartoons, animated movies.

However, I really dislike flash navigation. Slow, and a waste of time...

Some of my friends like impressing with nice flash based sites. Imho, a well designed html or css site can beat them anytime, like the ZenCss site.

[adamkane]

I meant Flashblock, not Adblock, but I use Adblock also.

I used Flash to navigate the foodtv.com site in the past, but I get my recipes elsewhere now.