I’ve been meaning to write an article on the death of flash for quite some time now, I’ve abandoned a number of drafts as the deluge of articles have hit the interwebs on the same topic.

So I thought it would be more interesting to give you a flash death watch tracking the number of sites abandoning flash:

Airlines

Virgin America – Flash Gone Bye Bye! (see here, here and the official statement here)

News & Media Sites

ABC – Official iPad App (see here, download here)

CBS – Reports coming in (here and here) of Flash-free video for the iPad

CNN – iPad Optimised Site (here)

Disney – iPad Optimised Site (here)

The Guardian - @tsmarsh informs me they use Brightcove so hope they’ll follow suit?

New York Times – iPad Optimised Site

NPR

TED – Completely Flash-Free version of their website (see here and the official announcement via twitter here)

Time Magazine

Wall Street Journal – iPad Optimised Site + iPad App (download here)

Video Sites

Brightcove – Supplier for sites like Wired, Slate, Time & NYT so expect to see them go over soon too!

Netflix – Official iPad App (see here)

Youtube – iPad, iPhone optimised sites; HTML 5 experiment for everyone else!

Vimeo

Add anymore sites you know in the comments and I’ll update the list.

We all love browser plugins, it’s one of the reasons that Firefox is so darn popular. But if you prefer the cleaner interface of Safari 4 (as I do) you needn’t miss out from some of these essential improvements to your browsing experience, the most important of which (in MHO) is Click to Flash, your own flash blocker.

Click to Flash is the wunderbar creation of Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzsch of Chicago it’s basic job is to prevent flash from loading until you want it to. Replacing flash files with this nifty clean-looking replacement image:

Click to Flash Replacement Image

Which you just click when you want to view the flash file in question. So no more annoying ads, preloading videos, Flash basically, which as I am sure you all appreciate is now a bigger preverbal pain in the butt since it was relegated to a sandboxed status is Snow Tabby.

So download, install and get back to browsing the internet quickly and efficiently, only seeing flash where you want to. Importantly it’s designed to allow sIFR images to load automatically, replace youtube videos with their H.264 equivalent played in quicktime where possible and allows whitelisting of sites where you always want flash to load.

I’m really enjoying this plugin, I hope you will too.

So I upgraded to Snow Tabby almost a month ago now, and despite constant checking of appfresh there are still a few programs that have not got on the 64 bit train yet… despite me crossing my fingers! So here is a delightful image of my Activity Monitor (unfortunately it doesn’t include all the 32 bit programs)

The most annoying of these has got to be the flash plugin, which frequently crashes and often wreaks havoc across my system. Adobe has had a year to correct this problem. Why hasn’t it been done already? What its really shown me is how many pages have flash installed, most seem unnecessary and could be easily replaced with HTML5 features (#dieie6 or if you must keep it add Chrome Frame! cheers google) For me the long death march for Flash has begun.

There are some programs that I expected to be converted to 64bit much more quickly amongst these are:

Google Quick Search

A great program, a worthy successor (or at least quickly becoming one) to Quicksilver, still very much beta – so why no 64bit love?

Evernote

Another essential program, no clear mention about 64bit yet – their most recent blog post on the topic doesn’t go into details.

Mozy

I use this program on all my computers to give me a secondary backup for libraries and essential files like contacts, calendars and the like. It’s particularly useful for my MBP and my Mac Mini, which I don’t care to try and backup using Time Machine over the network. But it’s had real problems since I’ve updated and it’s rather driving me nuts, so maybe I might start to look for a solution if it doesn’t get fixed soon, which is a shame really.

Update – After posting I thought I’d give it another go. But it seems to be stuck at the magic 60.5% complete. Crazy. Bye bye Mozy, it was good whilst it lasted.

Update 2 – So it’s been updated to version 1.5, still no 64 bit loveliness but maybe it’s going to be stable?

Coda

This is the most user-friendly web html coding program I’ve used, now I’m also partial (after some pressing from my web-designer bro) to Textmate, but I still regularly use this program for its great inbuilt previewing features and its easy-to-use ftp management. I can’t really live without it, but I’d really like it to have some 64 bit love soon!

iTerm

I like all my apps to be tabbed and a tabbed terminal was just a must. It’s updated frequently but no 64 bit love yet…

Skype

It’s just been upgraded for more Snow Tabby compatibility, but still no 64 bit version! Maybe the new owners will give it a more radical update in the near future (I’m hoping for proper integration with Apple’s Address Book)

Adium

Multi-IM compatible goodness, allowing me to log in to all my various chat accounts everywhere. I’m looking forward to it’s upgrade to 64 bit (and again Address Book love soon please – I’ve had some success with a program called AdiumBook but I hope for more)

and some that have been upgraded, but might have problems!

VLC

The 64bit version is working great for me, but apparently not so great if you use handbreak.

I’ll keep you updated as my conversion to 64 bit loveliness… later

UPDATE -

Growl

My favourite notification system has just been updated to include 64 bit loveliness. Yey!