NetViews: Flash? I swear by it

I hate Macromedia Flash. More than that, I hate the people who use it. Flash, it seems, has somehow spawned a generation of coders who enjoy torturing my time on the internet. Let's get this straight: 30-minute Flash intros to web sites are not big and not clever.

The reason I visit a web site in the first place is to look at it. I don't want to sit through the painful, barely artistic intro. If anyone creating a site wants to get those artistic urges out, they should paint a picture and get their Mum to stick it to the fridge.

But it's not just the whole Flash intro thing. How about adverts? There are the ones with little bugs that run all over the screen trying to dive under your next mouse click, so as to whisk you off to another site. Even worse are the ones that take over the entire screen and give you no method of shutting them down.

It's exactly like a bloke wearing a sandwich board jumping in front of me every time I enter a shop or stop to look at something. That kind of behaviour is worthy of a slap, I'm sure you'll agree.

But it gets worse. Once I'm past the overlong intro and adverts there are lots of Flash animations covering the page. The net effect is that my computer runs slower than an arthritic sloth re-enacting that bit from Chariots of Fire.

With the office finally fed up with my Tourettes Syndrome, I was resolved to the need to kill. Flash, that is.

Of course, it wasn't easy - the thing has no uninstall method. Instead you have to trawl the Macromedia web site to learn of its weaknesses.

Just as I was about to resort to a stake through the heart or silver bullets, I found it. All I had to do was delete the Flash directory and it would be dead.

Only it's not quite that easy. Instead of thousands of Flash adverts I got IE popping up and asking if I wanted to install Flash.

Ticking the 'never, even if it would save my life' button, I thought I was safe. But no, IE doesn't understand that and soon became as annoying as Flash.

So I reinstalled Flash, but edited the executable file and deleted large chunks of it. Feeling slightly smug with myself I sat back and tried a web site. For just over a day I had beaten it. No more warnings from IE and no more Flash. At last I was victorious.

But like a creature from a bad B-movie it came back, reinstalled itself and started working. Once more I was stuck with all my familiar Flash tortures.

Please, for my sanity and the peace of Network News, if you're developing a web site be careful with the amount of Flash you use. Remember you want people to visit your site, not envisage horrible things happening to you.

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