Adobe’s Flash has become the industry-standard for creating interactive web sites and streaming video.  As such, it is used nearly everywhere—from simple site introductions to numerous per-page advertisements to web sites that are built entirely in Flash—and it is this overuse of Flash that is becoming problematic.

About a year ago my browser started to crash at least twice a day—and all the tabs I had open were lost alongside the crash as well.  These crashes were, largely, the result of Flash failing and taking the browser with it.  With the introduction of Internet Explorer 7, and its new Manage Add-ons feature, I began disabling Flash on a regular basis—and, as a result, my browser stopped crashing.  Disabling Flash also benefitted me by reducing CPU utilization, providing protection from recurrent security vulnerabilities in Flash and eliminating Flash-based advertisements and many of the annoying moving things on various MySpace and similar pages, but it also prevented me from watching the occasional Flash-only videos—so I would have to regularly enable Flash too.

I found myself really enjoying a Flash-less web, but I was annoyed with the process of enabling and disabling Flash and decided to make a simple toolbar button that would make this a quick one-click deal—and Toggle Flash is the result.  It’s an extremely simple tool that does nothing more than enable and disable Adobe’s Flash.

If you like Toggle Flash, feel free to support it by sending a donation—or just drop me a note saying thanks, a little less flash can be good.