Be Excellent To Each Other

3.16 gz core 2 duo, 4 gigs ram, Vista 32 bit, 1 gig radeon card that runs Gridrunner Revolution like a bastard and an internet conenction that clips along nicely at 8 meg.

So why then does nothing flash video wise ever work? I'm trying to watch the footy on ITV, already missed the first goal. In all browsers, it buffers for longer than it plays at a time.

My standard browser is FF - has anyone got any clue why my ninja machine is worse than my old bollocks one on my old shit connection, where iplayer was fine?

Gah.

I've had to resort to watching iPlayer in IE now, as Firefox with AdBlock just knackers any online video service.

Chrome is the canine's testes. Try it. Firefox just became a bit too bloaty for me.

Give Opera a try. It works fine for me in that... Or I hear good things about Chrome, too...

Let's try IE then...

Nope, plays for about three seconds, buffers for about ten, taking about 30Kbps down a line capable of closer to 800.

I am getting seriously irate.

This is every browser, every streaming tv site.

I love Flash.

Especially when it's available to others.

Opera is dogshit for flash, apparently. Just tried it now, worst of the lot.

Forgot football was on.

Of course, the fact that at their end they are serving out thousands of video streams to everyone who wants to watch the football means that whatever computer you've got is probably largely irrelevant.

Football's on ITV 1...

I also hate Flash. I hate embedded videos, annoying site controls and all that other guff. I hate Flash adverts around Eurogamer that slow typing to a crawl.

I hate Flash adverts around Eurogamer that flash and animate so vividly and distractedly that I can't read the article without getting angry. And I'd rather just not go to their site than have to install a blocker.

it's possible there was a bit of traffic shaping involved. Have you got another pc you could try (or a mac, if you're strange) ?

Fyi, my work connection is a big fat pipe of a thing and youtube/iplayer still sucks.

I use firefox and have no problem watching flash videos on a connection that rarely achieves more than 3Mb/s. That's all. Thanks.

You don't run an adblocker?

I do, but only AdSweep in Chrome, which isn't brilliant.

*Whispers*

I've never run an adblocker, ever.

It makes the Internet a much nicer place.

A flash blocker is an absolute necessity for using the internet. (Replace all flash animations with blank outline placeholders, so you can click on them to start them, else they don't run or display.)

If you don't use one, you're a complete fool.

one ones I can use with IE 7 or 8?

It's interesting to watch what a resource hog flash is on my MBP as I have a little toolbar widget that shows core usage. Flash always seems to have both cores running at >40%
It pisses me off Safari doesn't appear to have a flash blocker as I find FF really rather clunky nowadays.

IE7Pro/IEPro has one.

No Gordons ALIVE?!!!

For shame BeeX...

I tried IE7pro, it killed my system.. I might try it again, when i get my new pc

The Flash plugin for macs is horrendously shit.

Anyway. I'd install a Flash blocker, but most of the Flash stuff I run into is stuff I want to see. I soon get tired of clicking each bit to enable them, ending up far more frustrated than I would if I saw a few Flash adverts.

You can disable them individually, it appears, by right clicking and deselecting "Play" which is something I suppose.

*waves*

In my main partition I've no problems watching flash videos. Unless I try to go full-screen.

I also swear by Noscript. The Internets are far more pleasant since I discovered it & Adblock.

Everything Adobe is nothing but fucking bloatware now. It also loves to completely take over your PC and make it crawl.

Case in point. I installed Acrobat reader 8. Rebooted my PC, took about five minutes. Then I see this thing beavering away in the task bar. Click it and it's updating itself to version 9 (which I don't bloody want) and doing all kinds of other shit to my PC.

Cancelled it, disabled anything auto and then stopped it booting with the PC (msconfig) but man, I wouldn't want any other Adobe products on my PC now unless they were hacked and portable (like the photoshops I use).

Who the fuck still uses Acrobat Reader?

I would've thought it was still heavily used. I use it primarily because I do PDF generation from PHP/TCPDF and Adobe Reader seems to give the best results.

I use Acrobat Professional.

It is, because the doofus public have been lead into believing it's the only one.


Surely that's a good reason not to use it? Or is it only you that looks at your PDFs?

I did PDFs from PHP once. What a nightmare that was.

Well I've only compared Adobe Reader with some PDF viewer that comes pre-installed on some of the laptops we bought in and the other viewer (I forget the name) didn't populate the PDFs with any of the content so I installed Adobe Reader instead.

And yes, PHP>PDF is a complete pain in the arse. TCPDF/FPDF make things as easy as possible but the results are a bit mixed once you start trying the fancier stuff.

Manuals bro, they're all feckin acrobat

Some hardware I have brought doesn't even have a paper manual, just a foogin' PDF on a cd.

Astbards.

Jesus cocking Christ. Seriously?

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

Grassy arse. Grabbing now.

Problem is I install Windows (examples likes) and go to open a manual and don't have a PDF reader. So Acrobat is always on the cd with the manuals.

And no, I didn't even realise there were third party apps. But that one you linked me to is like, 1/6th the fucking size of Cackrobat.

Nice ones.

Aye, but as a graphics suite I'm not aware of any decent alternatives. The seemlessness between Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign is excellent.

Back to Flash, if you follow Adobe's site to install it (in IE), by default it wants to do it via its own download manager. Considering the small file size of the flash player, why bother forcing your download manager on people?

Broadly, it's because Adobe hate you.

And we know it. Apparently they wanted to inject Win7 with all kinds of loveliness. Don't know if they got their wicked way with it in the end, though.

I get that a lot.

My PDF reader is SumatraPDF.

I hate Acrobat, and have hated it ever since I bought a budget re-release of SEAL Team and realized I could only read the (excellent) manual on my screen in stupid Acrobat. As opposed to on the toilet and in bed, THE places to read game manuals.

Alternative FTFY.

FTFY

The only annoying problem I have Flash-wise at the moment is the way Firefox keeps randomly freezing a Flash video for a half or full second before resuming (the audio carries on uninterrupted and the video catches up with it, resulting in bits being missed) - I tend to like to witness every frame myself, particularly in the more intense stuff where stuff can whizz by and you really need to spot it. Funnily enough, IE never seems to have this problem.


Having said all that though, I tend to download the more lengthy videos and transfer them to my iPod these days.

Yeah, missing that crucial downward thrust of Gianna's tits around that man's cock can really throw off a decent wank.

I've only skimmed this, so it may have already been mentioned, but what I hate is applications that only load if you have focus.

Take Scrabble on Facebook, you click on it, and it takes about a minute to load, so you think I'll tab away to see what's going on in BEEX, then you tab back, looking forward to playing your bingo word, and then it starts to load.

GRRRRRRRR

There are other examples, but I can't think of any right now.

Malc

Worse than that: Anything that thinks it's allowed to grab the focus, ever.