These flash advertisments, blinking, popping and presenting a carnival
of activity at the borders of articles I read are becoming so
flamboyant and omnipresent that I can hardly focus on what I'm
reading.

I don't think it's so serious that I'm going crazy in the literal
sence. Not hearing voices or the like. But I fear the development of
facial tics is becoming a real possibility.

Is there a way I can disable and re-enable the flash player capibility
of my browser, preferibly with a single click?

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 01 Jul 2005 10:06 PDT

Hi patrice...

In researching solutions, it seems that most of them are specific
to certain platforms. One works with Windows XP with Service Pack 2
and the .NET platform must be installed. Another is a hack for the
Mozilla/Firebird browser. Those are free, and yet another costs $20,
but offers a number of extra features and works on any standard
version of Windows.

What is your Operating System? Do you have the Microsoft .NET
platform installed, or are you willing to install it (free)?
What browser do you use, or must the solution work on more than
one browser? Are you willing to spend any money on the solution?
If so, how much?

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by patrice29-ga on 01 Jul 2005 12:56 PDT

Hi sublime. I have Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 2, but
don't know if I have the .NET platform installed. Sure I guess I'd be
willing to install it if it's quick and easy. Typically I use IE6. But
perhaps it's time to make a different change. I took Johnny_v's advice
and installed Firefox (thanks for the comment johnny) and I do notice
about half of the irritation illiminated right away. Already I didn't
get pop-ups after installing Norton Anti-Virus last year. But what
drove me over the edge this morning was this site:

http://www.forbes.com/

Now with firefox I still get the explosive top banner, but with IE
there's also a bonnanza of activity in the right most column of the
screen. This area is blank with Firefox. So it is a big improvement,
although I havent checked it on many sites yet.

Sure I'd be willing to pay $20 for the Firefox upgrade. But ease of
enabling/disabeling is paramount to me rather than extra features.
After all Flash content is often a good thing. I'd be missing a lot if
my surfing experience was completely without this great technology.
But it's that just now (in my opinion) we seem to be reaching a point
where advertising is becoming visually overbearing. There has to be a
'time-out' button.

Remember in the movie Minority Report everything from magazine covers
to cereal boxes was animated. That should be fun. I can't wait.

Hi patrice...

First I should tell you that the animated ad to the right of
the Forbes page is *not* Flash, and won't go away with the 
Flash-killing software installed. If you right-click on it 
and select Properties, you'll see that it's a streamed ad.
There *is* a way to eliminate these, but more on that later.

Regardless if that particular ad is Flash, there are certainly
a growing abundance of them - not on cereal boxes, *yet*, but
I share your trepidation. So you will want to eliminate these,
and I'll proceed to provide the solutions for both IE and 
Firefox. Fortunately, since you have XP Service Pack 2, the
one for IE is free, as is the one for Firefox.

The IE solution that requires the .NET framework may not be
worth the effort. the .NET framework is a bulky installation,
and, though it proceeds quickly enough and allows you to run
some of the more cutting-edge bits of software currently being
written, you may not want to install yet another Microsoft
monopoly. If you want to, here's the Flash blocker that will
run on it, courtesy of Corey Gouker:

FlashBang
http://blogs.coreygouker.com/CommentView.aspx?guid=ad5040f7-11ca-485e-a0eb-759cecd2d1c0

If and when you run the installation for this, it will tell you
if you have the .NET framework installed, and connect you with 
the download if you don't. Both programs are free.


If you'd rather not install the .NET framework (I, myself, am
hesitant), I found another option which is quite small, sits in
the system tray and can be enabled and disabled with a click.
It's called No! Flash, from BBshare.

It will:
- Enable/Disable Flash (Macromedia Shockwave Flash Player) 
- Enable/Disable Script (Popup Ads, Animated Ads...) 
- Enable/Disable Images (GIF, JPG ...) 
- Enable/Disable Videos 
- Enable/Disable Animations (GIF Animation) 
- Enable/Disable Background Sounds 

It's also free, though the registered version, for $10, will do
a lot more:
- Block known Datamining, aggressive advertising, Parasites,
  Browser hijackers, and tracking components in MS Internet Explorer. 
- Update block list from internet
http://www.bbshare.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53

I installed and tried it, and it's a fine program. Incidentally,
the setting to block the animated square ad that starts with 
"I wish we could relive the night we met." is to block GIF
Animations.

Also note that you can't just click the icon to make the Flash
and other annoyances go away. You'll need to reload the page,
or open the same page in a new window after disabling the ads.


Finally, there's the paid solution for IE, that costs $20, 
and has many additional features, called Popup Ad SmasheR:

- Cleans PC automatically.
- Password Internet Explorer.
- Removes cookies.
- Stop Animated Flash ads.
- Stop Floating pop-up ads.
- Stop Sliding pop-up ads.
- Cancel Timer ads.
- Remove Web Bugs.
- Block Messenger Service.
- Stop Message Boxes.
- Stop Blinking Picture ads.
- Stop Shaking Picture ads.
- Cancel 3rd Party Activity. 
- No Browser helper Object
- Auto Cleans Temp folder
http://www.popupstop.com/index.htm




As for Firefox, there are a couple of options I can point you 
to, but I'm using Mozilla, and I'm not going to go to Firefox
to test them for you. One is the adblock extension mentioned
by johnny_v-ga. It has mixed reviews and a couple of bugs, 
but sounds like it may be workable:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=10

You can browse other add-on extensions here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/?application=firefox


The second is a way of blocking ad-sized flash windows from
loading, and requires you to do a bit of configuring, thanks
to Jonas Galvez and modified by the poster on GeekTimeLinux:
http://www.geektimelinux.com/index.php?q=node/view/139

I'll elaborate a little on the instructions there:

You need to open a text file using Notepad, and copy and
paste the exact text on the page above. I'll reproduce it
here for simplicity, since it's hyperlinked on the page:

*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="120"height="60",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="120"height="600",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="120"height="800",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="140"height="800",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="150"height="70",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="160"height="60",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="160"height="600",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="184"height="90",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="200"height="23",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="234"height="60",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="237"height="90",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="250"height="250",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="300"height="250",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="336"height="280",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="338"height="282",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="342"height="286",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="425"height="600",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="468"height="60",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="500"height="62",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="600"height="30",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="728"height="90",
*type="application/x-shockwave-flash"width="728"height="105" {
display: none;
}

Once you've pasted it in and saved it (to any name) then 
rename the file, precisely: userContent.css

Then just drop it into the following folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUsername\Application
Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\randomcharacters.slt\chrome

Note that you'll have to substitute your actual Windows
username and random characters slt directory to find the
chrome folder on your computer.

Then clear your Firefox (this works on Mozilla, too) cache
and all the Flash ads that use those window sizes for ads,
which is most of them, will not load anymore - ever.

The nice thing about this fix is that you can still load
some of the cool Flash games which load in a full page
or window. Only the ads are killed.

Note that this still won't eliminate the square ad on the
right of the Forbes page - the: "I wish we could relive the
night we met." ad, since that, again, is based on a GIF 
animation. The adblock extension above may handle that.



Last, but certainly not least, I'll share a method of killing
ads no matter what browser you're using, or what format they
happen to be in. I use this method, and had to disable it to
see the ads you were upset with.

This is a bit more of a techy solution, but no more complicated
than creating the userContent.css file, above. Well, maybe a
little more complicated, but well worth learning.

Rather than blocking the format of the ads, this involves a way
of blocking the ad servers themselves, using the URL, or web
address from which the ads originate, and blocking them from
ever reaching your computer.

This bit of magic arises by using the Windows HOSTS file. The
HOSTS file can be used to redirect the addresses of ad servers
to your own computer's address, rather than to DNS lookup, so
that instead of looking for the ad on the web, it looks for the
ad on your own computer. Since it doesn't exist on your computer,
the ad simply fails to load.

This HOSTS file is located here:

C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc

It has no extension, and is simply named HOSTS. To open and
modify it, you'll need to right-click on it and select Open
With from the context menu. Then find Notepad in the list
and select it to open the file. Another way would be to 
temporarily rename it to HOSTS.txt, which will allow Notepad
to open it, and rename it back to HOSTS when you're done,
ignoring all the warnings.

Several savvy techie-types have gone public with good lists
of sites to block by editing the HOSTS file. Some are so
extensive that the file gets very large, which slows down
how fast your browser will load. A more moderate approach,
which keeps the file down to a nice size, and still blocks
the majority of ads, can be found on this page from the 
Microsoft MostValuableProfessionals site:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

Rather than edit your current HOSTS file, which contains no
information you need to save, you can just rename it to HOSTS1,
download the hosts.zip file from the site above, unzip it, move
it to the etc directory, as given above, and rename it from 
hosts.txt to HOSTS, and you're done.

The vast majority of ads will now never load.

Note the other useful information on that page, as well.
There are instructions for disabling the unnecessary DNS Client,
and a batch file for renaming HOSTS to NOHOSTS at the click of
a shortcut, so that any content being blocked by HOSTS will be
allowed to show when you refresh the page. Using that is what
allowed me to view the ads that were vexing you.


That about runs the gamut of solutions. If anything's not
clear, or you need further input before deciding, or help
with, or after, installing what you choose, just let me know.


Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that  
the answer cannot be improved upon by way of a dialog  
established through the "Request for Clarification" process. 

sublime1-ga


Additional information may be found from an exploration of
the links resulting from the Google searches outlined below.

Searches done, via Google:

"stop flash ads"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22stop+flash+ads%22

"stop flash"
://www.google.com/search?q=%22stop+flash%22

Great answer sublime. Thanks!

Bar none you really only need a couple of things. First off I would
suggest you get rid of you Internet Explorer and try out Mozilla Fire
Fox (www.getfirefox.com). It costs nothing and is quite configurable.
The first thing that Fire Fox is going to stop is all the additional
applications (adware/spyware) that get loaded without you knowing it
when you surf. They are around 20% of ad popups and advertising
generators. Then look for the extension adblock on the same web site.
Extensions are easy to find and install on fire fox. The nice thing
about adblock is you can configure what gets displayed on a page. You
can block all ads or turn it to waiting mode and it will let you know
when a flash or banner is displayed and will let you block it
manually.

I am not affiliated with firefox or the adblock creators just a
concerned surfer who also is sick of banners and advertisements.

Hope this helps.

patrice...

Thanks very much for the rating and the tip. Of course I'm curious
which solution(s) you decided on, and whether the HOSTS solution 
seemed too daunting. Let us know if you get a chance.

sublime1-ga

I did change to Firefox this weekend, so maybe that's enough change
for now. It does seem equivalent or a little better. Things that are
better that I notice right away is when your on a secure page, to put
in a password or something, you get a much (much) better visual
indication that the page is secure. Also my favorites list will
maintain the custom icon rather than being changed back to the 
microsoft e logo within a couple hours.

I'll explore further with your suggestions next week.
GAIA!!! That stands for Google Answers Is Awesome.

Thanks for the update. I LOVE the GAIA bit!