# Flash can die in a fire



## FistofFenris (Jul 20, 2010)

Seriously, this is the second time in two months that I've had a problem with flash giving my browser (firefox) a frigging stroke.

So let me explain, I recently upgraded to the latest flash that I know about (Version 10.1.53.64) and the most recent firefox upgrade (3.6.6). Now whenever I play a flash game with more than two screens in it, it starts lagging to the point it's running at almost 1 frame per second. I'm not kidding. So I end up opening my task manager, and it says that the "Plugin Container" is eating up 15% of my CPU, and that Firefox was was almost nothing. I have no idea what's going on. Should I downgrade? Is there a patch? What should I do?


----------



## Ricky (Jul 20, 2010)

15% isn't a lot.  How's your RAM usage?

EDIT:  I was thinking maybe it is not able to access everything right away but now that I think of it, it's more likely not able to use the video support it needs.  If it was related to the upgrade there may be a patch but most likely you'd need to roll back to fix it right away.


----------



## FistofFenris (Jul 20, 2010)

Ricky said:


> 15% isn't a lot.  How's your RAM usage?
> 
> EDIT:  I was thinking maybe it is not able to access everything right away but now that I think of it, it's more likely not able to use the video support it needs.  If it was related to the upgrade there may be a patch but most likely you'd need to roll back to fix it right away.



No, you don't understand, 15% is when it's sitting at the menu screen of said game, not doing anything. I haven't measured it yet above that but I've seen people talking 60% and I'm not totally sure but I may have seen something close to those numbers.

Otherwise, I probably need to go back to the original flash. I just don't have the old files. Like an idiot, I deleted them to make room...


----------



## CAThulu (Jul 22, 2010)

I agree; flash is awesomely stupid. :/


----------



## ToeClaws (Jul 22, 2010)

Aye - Flash has managed to get continually worse and less efficient every time they release a new version of it.  Fortunately, with the advent of HTML5 standards and new codecs, Flash will start to go away.  In the mean time, we can hope that stuff like LightSpark help to give folks an alternative to that horrid program.


----------



## Vaelarsa (Jul 22, 2010)

Download Firefox 3.6.3 and disable it from automatically installing updates.
The Plugin Container is a memory-eating piece of shit, and I had problems with lagging and freezing with the new Firefox as well.
I downgraded and haven't had problems since.


----------



## CyberFoxx (Jul 22, 2010)

Fun fact, that 15% CPU that plugin-container is using is what Firefox would've been using pre-out-of-process.
Personally, I love the new out-of-process setup. I can give plugin-container a higher priority (I love Process Explorer) and am actually able to watch HD videos on Youtube! Also, I could always just mark it as idle, and browsing doesn't go to crap when I visit a site that has lots of useless Flash on it.
Plugin-container a memory hog? Most I've seen it allocate for the working set is 60MB and 30MB for the private bytes. Wonder if that has to do with my low-memory footprint Firefox setup...


----------



## Arcum (Jul 26, 2010)

Personally I would just go back to what you had before and wait for a new update and see if that works and they fixed your problem.


----------



## Daisy La Liebre (Jul 28, 2010)

It can go and fuck itself horribly. Every now and then Flash will crash, freezing up my whole computer as well as Youtube and Tinychat.


----------



## Panel (Jul 30, 2010)

HTML5 isn't likely to be the savior everyone thinks it will be. Given current benchmarks, HTML5 and Flash aren't too different in terms of performance. (see http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/flash-player-cpu-hog-or-hot-tamale-it-depends-.html) Running media in a browser costs CPU cycles and it is looking hard to avoid. The final release of HTML 5 will have some performance improvements, but I doubt they will be dramatic.

In terms of buggyness, it is possible that HTML5 will harbor less bugs than Flash. However, that is all dependent on HTML5's implementor, of which there will be many. Thus, we are going to see browser specific bugs pop up in it just like we do with Javascript right now. In my opinion as a software developer, this is MUCH worse than having to deal with a single implementation that bugs out in predictable ways.


----------



## Runefox (Jul 30, 2010)

Panel: HTML5 is possible to accelerate via hardware, something Adobe has been loathe to do with Flash and only recently offered any support for (and then, it only supports video overlay (not as new) and DXVA h.264 decoding (brand new and only works for newer ATI/nVidia cards) for flash video, and no acceleration for other features). Newer browsers, including Firefox 4.0, IE9, Safari 5, and future revisions of Chrome, all support hardware accelerated page rendering. The IE9 technology demo in particular is fairly astounding in terms of performance when you pit it against earlier browsers without any hardware acceleration in the tests Microsoft offers.


----------



## ToeClaws (Jul 30, 2010)

As a sidenote, my testing thus far with LightSpark as a flash replacement has not been good - seems to just crash out the browser (tried several of them) upon trying to play a flash video. >_<


----------



## Riv (Jul 30, 2010)

ToeClaws said:


> As a sidenote, my testing thus far with LightSpark as a flash replacement has not been good - seems to just crash out the browser (tried several of them) upon trying to play a flash video. >_<


 
There's on open-source flash player? I didn't think such a thing was possible! Even if it doesn't work now, it gives me some hope for the future ^_^


----------



## Fissioninferno (Jul 30, 2010)

Flash doesn't even do what it is supposed to anymore.  We should just call it Crash, that's all it does.


----------



## Runefox (Jul 30, 2010)

There have been a few open source Flash projects; Gnash comes to mind for me first. None of them have really been any good, because Flash continues to move forward with new features at a fairly steady pace (though not much lately). The fact that it's always closed-source means that reverse-engineering is all that's possible, so... Yeah. Chances are not good for an open source Flash player to exist at parity with Adobe's offering by any measure before the time Flash is antiquated. Which, while probably very soon, won't be as soon as Apple thinks.


----------



## Panel (Jul 30, 2010)

Runefox said:


> Panel: HTML5 is possible to accelerate via hardware, something Adobe has been loathe to do with Flash and only recently offered any support for



They're slow, but I think Flash will support it in the future if they want to compete.



Runefox said:


> Newer browsers, including Firefox 4.0, IE9, Safari 5, and future revisions of Chrome, all support hardware accelerated page rendering. The IE9 technology demo in particular is fairly astounding in terms of performance when you pit it against earlier browsers without any hardware acceleration in the tests Microsoft offers.



Doh I completely forgot about this. So much for being argumentative at 2am.


----------



## Runefox (Jul 30, 2010)

Well, to be fair, netbooks not based on something like the NVidia Ion platform will suffer from high CPU usage with HTML5, but the same is true of Flash. I'm not sure how they compare directly, so I couldn't say for sure one way or another if the netbook market would be happier with HTML5 or Flash.


----------



## Dr. Durr (Aug 7, 2010)

FistofFenris said:


> Seriously, this is the second time in two months that I've had a problem with flash giving my browser (firefox) a frigging stroke.
> 
> So let me explain, I recently upgraded to the latest flash that I know about (Version 10.1.53.64) and the most recent firefox upgrade (3.6.6). Now whenever I play a flash game with more than two screens in it, it starts lagging to the point it's running at almost 1 frame per second. I'm not kidding. So I end up opening my task manager, and it says that the "Plugin Container" is eating up 15% of my CPU, and that Firefox was was almost nothing. I have no idea what's going on. Should I downgrade? Is there a patch? What should I do?


 

Doom Triple Pack Runs on Flash 10, It uses actual Doom Source Code, It runs fine.
Maybe Its Firefox.


----------



## Apollo (Aug 8, 2010)

Meh, I've had Java lock 92% of my CPU up.


----------

