Where and how (and if) to install the Firefox "flash" plugin

[Lynn Newton]

> I do not add many plugins to FF either in Linux or Windows.  I explicitly DO
> NOT download/add ANY add-ons from links that pop up on web sites.  > Basicly I
> do not trust the average site to be honest or competent to add something to
> my system.

Well, that's way to look at it I suppose.

Personally, as a pretty heavy web user and developer I have 13
Firefox downloads on my Linux version, and don't know how I ever
lived without any of them. Well ... there is one and maybe two
that I could dispense with.

Every one that I use I've found by going to Firefox's extensions
site at addons.mozilla.com and downloading what looks good after
reading any appropriate reviews. I also figure anything that's
marked as particularly popular is being used by a lot of people,
so is likely to work.

As for installation -- if a person wants to do it the hard way,
it's his privilege to do so. I've found that hardly anything could
be easier than installing a Firefox extension. Click and it's
done, usually with a Firefox restart, which is usually possible
without losing the current environment.

Exercising cation is well and good. I've never had a bit of problem
doing this.

One problem I do experience is fairly frequent Firefox crashes.
I'm sure I push the memory limits pretty far between the extensions
and the number of tabs and windows I have open. Especially if I'm
using more than a couple of apps that use Ajax I'm liable to see
it croak, sometimes two or three times a day. Yeah, it's irritating,
but it's rarely disastrous and easy enough to recover from.

I saw an article a couple of days ago that questioned whether
Firefox is becoming another bloated memory pig like IE and some
of Firefox's predecessors, given that it was Firefox's original
intent to be lean and mean.

My take on that is that the basic Firefox is a good thing, and
whatever gets added is your own choice. I had utterly no need
for *any* of the stuff that came with the old Netscape and Mozilla --
the email programs, HTML editors, IRC clients, and all that useless
stuff.

What I add to Firefox is by and large brilliant and incredibly
useful hacks that I absolutely love having. That's a lot different
from being handed a pile of stuff and being told: Here, now you've
got all this stuff.

In modern software modularity, and user-controlled customizeability
are the name of the game. I want my software to do what *I* want
it to do.

-- 
Lynn David Newton
Phoenix, Arizona