Last night around 3AM I was browsing the web and listening to Dark Side pretty loudly. I suddenly heard a really loud gunshot come from my speakers that literally made my heart skip a beat. I look a bit lower on the page and notice a really annoying Flash movie ad that just starts playing without me doing a thing. That’s when I said enough is enough and decided to do something about it since it’s obvious people who create Flash will continually use sound without user interaction. Flash really needs to remember sound levels across sessions to prevent someone from giving themselves a heart attack. To prevent Flash ads from loading and playing sound as well taking over the top layer of a page I created FlashBang.

FlashBang is a very simple application. Upon installation it adds an icon to your standard toolbar in Internet Explorer. Clicking the icon then toggles Flash on and off. The application accomplishes this by simply adding or removing a registry key. This is pretty much the same thing the new Manage Add-ons does in Internet Explorer with SP2 except it requires that you refresh the page for the changes to take affect. The plus is that it doesn’t require more than two clicks so enabling and disabling Flash is quick and easy. When you disable Flash you’ll see an icon in the lower right hand corner of the window as seen here.

The system requirements are that you are running XP with Service Pack 2 OR Vista and have the .NET Framework 1.1 or later installed and of course that you’re using Internet Explorer. The application is provided on a free of charge and free to distribute basis. I will gladly accept donations of any amount via PayPal.

Download: FlashBang (updated 4/27/2007 12:01AM, please uninstall previous versions first)

If you have any questions or comments feel free.

UPDATE: Renamed from TorchFlash to FlashBang thanks to Dylan Greene.

Also, it looks like there is a minor bug in that if you have IE open while you’re installing FlashBang the icon won’t be activated in IE by default. Please be sure to close all IE windows before installing FlashBang. If you run into this little bug go to View then Toolbars then Customize, scroll the list and Add FlashBang to the toolbar.

If you’ve uninstalled FlashBang you can still Disable and Enable Flash using the Manage Add-ons feature of Internet Explorer found under the Tools menu. You may need to visit a site which normally has Flash to see Flash pop into the list. Really though, this is all the app actually does to block Flash ads. Sadly it means disabling all other Flash and not just the ads. Other options include a nice big hosts file, or also use FireFox which has some other ways of blocking ads through CSS and such.

UPDATE: I’m releasing a minor update to FlashBang which will fix any issues regarding installation on a machine with only the .NET Framework 2.0 installed. At this point if you have 1.1.4322, 2.0.50727.0, or later installed, FlashBang should work without any issues. To check which version of the .NET Framework that you have installed run the following at a command prompt ” reg query hklm\software\microsoft\asp.net “.

UPDATE: Now installing on Windows Vista! I had to update the Visual Studio installer to recognize Windows v6, aka Vista. FlashBang will now install on Vista without any known issues… well, other than the UAC stuff. I do NOT have $125 to get a cert to code sign these free apps since well, I’ve only had $5 donated thus far. Until I can get the app code signed anyone running UAC will be bugged while installing FlashBang, and bugged again when they go to toggle Flash on and off in IE. On the plus side, there is a check box in the Protected Mode prompt in IE to quit prompting about the app in the future. I suggest people check that box till I can get a cert and code sign my apps.

Tags: Designing, Ideas, Internet, Rants, Work

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