Flash the double-edged sword | How to remove Flash pop-up ads

Are you like the rest of the population and sick-n-tired of all the popup ads when you are browsing? Do you wonder why you still get popup ads even though you have set your browser, Safari, Firefox or Chrome to “Block Popup Ads”?

So…double-edged sword huh? Yes, There are a lot of nice things flash has done to the web experience, however there are also some bad things as well. Ads and security issues versus pretty.

All ads are annoying, however, animated or pop-up ads are the equivalent of someone ramming a dead, dry and golden christmas tree branch into your eye. You know what I am talking about. You thought you took control of this blinding experience and chose to “Block pop-up ads” only to find that your browsing experience is more and more riddled by pop-up ads. Let me let you in on a secret… it is Adobe Flash. that’s right. the ads are added into the ad (he he). let’s look at an example shall we…

The annoying popup

http://backpacker.com and a reason I hated the site until now. When you load their page you are greeted with what seems a normal magazine theme website and then all of a sudden… BAM!… your hit with a “subscribe to our magazine”ad. This is a slap in the face to those of us who already subscribe, and the reason I stopped visiting the site. The following screen shot shows what I mean (There are also non-pop-up ads that are Flash animations as well out there).

There may be hope. There is a program I found out about on the TUAW blog called “ClickToFlash”. Basically, this is actually a plug-in for your browser… and if I am not mistaken, only for Safari. You can turn this little sucker on and CHOOSE, yes YOU choose whether or not you want the Flash to display. The settings page and an example of how a page will be viewed are shown below.

All you have to do is click the little gear icon in the corner of the Flash content and you will get an options menu similar to the on in the image titled What it will look like.

I also wondered if this would stop the stupid pop-ups within the YouTube videos themselves. Since I have my settings set to view the H.264 versions, that is the choice I am given to open. So I clicked on the little “H.264″ text (as opposed to the “Flash” text) in the middle of the RANDOM video I chose. Low and behold, the pop-up ad that played in the Flash version of the video did not show up in the H.264 version. That is sweat!

So, where do you get this tasty morsel filter? Right HERE.

As a side note, I am told there is also a healthy dose of security risks through Flash