Toggle Flash - A very good and simple and FREE solution for Adobe Flash IE freeze-up problems

Recently, while helping someone in the PCPitstop.com forums, where they were having problems with IE (Internet Explorer) freezing up, I let them know that the likely cause was Adobe Flash 10, which came out late last year (2008) and has been causing IE freeze-ups to many users. I directed them to a few other threads in the MS forums and even the Adobe Flash forums. They reported back and thanked me for telling them about Toggle Flash... but unfortunately, up until they thanked me, I had never heard of Toggle Flash before. I went and read the threads that I had directed them to and further in the threads, another poster mentioned Toggle Flash as a simple solution to the Adobe Flash freeze up problems.

It's a simple add-on to IE and with the click of a button, you can turn off the Adobe Flash add-on and then surf to your heart's content without seeing any Flash advertisements or see your IE, possibly with many tabs open, freeze up and then you lose all of your open tabs before you had a chance to read or save those pages as favorites... this has happened to me many times and then I'd have to go into my IE History and recreate my searches.

Anyhow... I decided to read up on Toggle Flash a little and then I installed it a couple of days ago from the main site at http://flash.melameth.com/togflash.html.

Here is what I've had to say about it so far in forums and emails to the developer of Toggle Flash, Daniel Melameth. I should note that he was very quick to reply to my email inquiry also!!!

FIVE STARS for that!!!

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"(rgsmile @ 8:39pm Mon Jan 5 2009)

Thanks. The link, in LennyVNOLA's previous response , (I am now using Toggle Flash (freeware add-on for IE7) quite successfully: http://flash.melameth.com/ might be worth a look for me and others. Thanks to all that responded.

rgsmile"

My reply to rgsmile....

Well... after IE froze up on me last night with a lot of tabs that I did a lot of work to find and hadn't saved yet... thank God for the History search.... but anyhow.. I went ahead and downloaded and installed Toggle Flash and haven't had an IE freeze up today and I've done some serious surfing today.

The only negative thing that I can say about Toggle Flash is that it doesn't tell you whether it's off or on so you have to go to your favorite YouTube or other known flash site to see if you left it off or on before you do your major surfing so you don't get surprised with a freeze up.

I'm going to email the author of Toggle Flash and see if there's a way for the icon to display whether Toggle Flash has it turned off or on.

I did have to go into my View Menu, then Toolbars and unlock the toolbars, then close and reopen IE to get the Toggle Flash Icon to show up which the main site explains about anyhow. You might also have to go into your Manage Add-ons and enable it if you have your settings to block add-ons.

Another thing that happens... at least with me.. is each time I do a Toggle Flash, I get a little black Command Prompt window that pops up and then disappears. I didn't check the Toggle Flash site but I guess this is normal.

It works for me so far after 18 hours of power surfing.

Lenny V.

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Here are my emails to/from the creator of Toggle Flash...

January 7, 2009

Daniel@Melameth...

I just started Toggle Flash and I'm glad to be free of IE freeze ups caused by quirky Flash programming.

I have a couple of questions...

Is the Toggle Flash button on the IE toolbar supposed to indicate if TF has Flash turned on or off? Is there a way other than to test it to see which mode it is in? For now, I've been just going to YouTube to check and see which mode I left it in but it would be nice to know at a glance.

Thanks for a good product.

Lenny Vasbinder

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His reply....

January 7, 2009

Hey Lenny,

Unfortunately, at this time, the toolbar button just activates the toggle feature--is it not an indicator of the status of Flash. This is on my list of things to do for a future version of Toggle Flash, but Toggle Flash is extremely simple right now and getting the toolbar button to change based on the status of Flash is, actually, far more complex. As for determining the status of Flash, if you go to a page with Flash content, but Flash is disabled, IE will notify you of this in the Status Bar on the bottom of the page with an image of a little red no sign on top of a little silver cog--which is made to represent an Add-On that the site is trying to use is disabled.

I tend to always browse with Flash disabled, and only enable it when I specifically want it, so determining the state of Flash is somewhat easier for me in this case, but this is, by far, the most requested feature of Toggle Flash and I'm definitely taking it into account.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on Toggle Flash.


Cheers,

Daniel

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In February, 2009, Daniel sent me an email notifying me of some upgrades that were made. Here is his email.

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Melameth
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 6:58 PM
To: 'NHSNOLA'
Subject: RE: Toggle Flash


Lenny,

I remembered your email and thought I'd drop you a little note to tell you I recently made a minor update to Toggle Flash to address a compatibility issue with IE8 and, while I was here, I also changed the executable so that it no longer opens a Command Prompt window when clicked. As such, feel free to download the updated installer from the site. In addition, it appears Microsoft has given IE8 the ability to control which sites can use a specific add-on and I'm considering leveraging this feature for a future version of Toggle Flash.

Sincerely,
Daniel