You just can’t escape the seemingly ubiquitous presence of Flash on the internet. Even if you ignore all the ugly, distracting Flash ads, you still can’t escape it on your favourite online video-sites like YouTube, where the video-player and its user-interface are in Flash. And this is where it really hits my nerves.

No, it’s not because I own an Apple computer where (as I’ve heard) Flash performs very badly. It’s not because Steve Jobs hates it. Even the buggy and resource-hungry nature of Flash isn’t the primary reason (my PCs are powerful enough to handle it).

The reason I hate Flash is because it doesn’t behave like it’s a part of the browser. As you’d obviously know, controls for the online video player are in Flash. If you click on the video, or on an interface element  to pause the video, or to change the volume, it would be like you have exited the main interface of the browser—like you have entered into a new application. Standard keyboard shortcuts for the browser will no longer function. And I do use a lot of keyboard shortcuts.

If I pause the video and click Ctrl+T to open a new tab, nothing happens. When the video ends, if I click Ctrl+W to close the tab, or Ctrl+L to go to the address bar, or Ctrl+Tab to go to the next tab, or if I simply want to use the arrow keys to scroll, nothing works. Like a freaking troll, Flash just refuses to behave like how the browser should behave. Those keyboard shortcuts are pretty much standard across all browsers, and Flash maintains its stupid behaviour in all the browsers.

I know that it seems like a minor irritant, but the point is that it really, really irritates me, to the point where I really want nothing more than to dump Flash. But I can’t. Man, I HATE Flash! And it doesn’t look like Adobe really wants to give a shit about it. DIE FLASH!