As a graphic and web designer, I’m pretty sensitive to the idea of people blocking flash movies. However, the way I look at it, a user won’t block your flash if you’ve made it right. If the movie is truly interesting and part of the overall experience (as with most of the sites that I’ve proudly designed), a user comes to think of the Flash as an integral part of their browsing session. Granted, you could work for a company that creates rich media ads (as I have) for the expressed purpose of selling you the little blue pill—or giving you an online high school diploma, stock tips, etc.

Anyway, just browsing MySpace nowadays ends up being too much of a headache with “punch the clown” animations and the new trend of creating fake webcam videos to have you sign up for some other social networking or dating service. There’s a new Firefox Add-on that enables you to auto-block all Flash animations by default and then select options to 1) Play just that movie, 2) Play all movies on a specific site, or 3) Add a specific site to the exclude list to stop it from being blocked.

The link to the add-on, which I greatly enjoy, is below. Should you decide to install it, feel free to exclude donline and era//404 from your blocked Flash sites.

Flashblock 1.5.4.1
Firefox add-on to block Flash from selected sites.
Visit Flashblock Download Page