OMG, Flash is horrible!

[Carfax83]

I now understand why so many people hate Adobe Flash. Although to be honest, I've never really had a problem with it over the years until now..

Since I updated to Windows 10 Redstone, one thing has been bothering me. For some reason, the Edge browser now feels laggy. For example, say I go to a webpage, and as the webpage is loading, if I hover my cursor over a link, it will take a couple of seconds for the link to be highlighted, or for the cursor to show that it can be selected (by turning into a hand) and clicked on..

It never did this before the update at all. For troubleshooting, I tried reinstalling the GPU drivers as Edge uses a lot of hardware acceleration, but this had no effect at all. Secondly, I tried reinstalling Edge itself and still no cigar. Finally, I tried reinstalling Windows 10 Redstone, but keeping my files and programs intact. That didn't work either. Also, Chrome 64 bit did not have this problem so it's definitely specific to Edge.

What finally ended up working though, was disabling flash in the options menu! With Flash disabled, Edge went from being a bit laggy to SUPER RESPONSIVE! Web pages also load noticeably faster than with Flash enabled.

Now this discovery begs a few questions:

1) What did Microsoft do to Edge Redstone's flash performance between the last major public release (ver. 1511) to make it perform so much slower?

2) Why is Flash even enabled by default in the first place? Since disabling flash, all the web content on the webpages I visit still loads fine in HTML5, but is just faster.

3) Why are so many websites still using Flash, if HTML 5 is that much better?

 

[Carfax83]

OK, after doing some investigation, I found the answers to questions two and three. Basically, the reason why Flash is still preferred over HTML5 on many websites is because Flash content can be GPU accelerated. I've noticed that when switching between HTML5 and Flash, CPU usage is significantly greater on the former, which can negatively affect overall browser performance and media playback if you have a weak CPU.

 

[nerp]

Edge originally didn't even have flash. Users demanded it and MS caved, sadly.

I hate flash and have it disabled, both in Chrome and Edge. I will never run the standalone flash installer, either. If a site uses flash and I can't see something, oh well. I'm willing to give up the flash functionality, no matter what. Can't say there's anything important on the internet that I lose by not using flash.

 

[Carfax83]

Edge originally didn't even have flash. Users demanded it and MS caved, sadly.

I hate flash and have it disabled, both in Chrome and Edge. I will never run the standalone flash installer, either. If a site uses flash and I can't see something, oh well. I'm willing to give up the flash functionality, no matter what. Can't say there's anything important on the internet that I lose by not using flash.

After reading your post, it reminded me that flash could be disabled in Chrome as well, so I went ahead and did it!

BTW, here's an article from PCworld that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about when it comes to how flash can really affect your browser performance in a negative manner.

Using Edge and Chrome with Flash disabled results in much less RAM usage than with flash enabled.

 

[Elixer]

OK, after doing some investigation, I found the answers to questions two and three. Basically, the reason why Flash is still preferred over HTML5 on many websites is because Flash content can be GPU accelerated. I've noticed that when switching between HTML5 and Flash, CPU usage is significantly greater on the former, which can negatively affect overall browser performance and media playback if you have a weak CPU.

Actually, HTML5 can be hardware accelerated as well, it depends on how the browser does it.
The main reason they still use flash is, they don't want to spend the $$$ to update.
Flash always will be a security hole, even with the 21,000 patches already done, it still is a leaking sieve.

 

[Carfax83]

Actually, HTML5 can be hardware accelerated as well, it depends on how the browser does it.
The main reason they still use flash is, they don't want to spend the $$$ to update.
Flash always will be a security hole, even with the 21,000 patches already done, it still is a leaking sieve.

Hmm, you're right. I just loaded an HTML5 video on Gamespot whilst looking at my GPUs VPU usage in NVidia inspector, and sure enough it had a load. I don't know why I thought that HTML5 was giving me higher CPU usage than when Flash was enabled before