Do not you hate it when a flash element on a website starts playing media automatically on visit? This can be really annoying, especially if it makes use of sound or video.
While you probably expect that kind of behavior on media portals such as YouTube, you often experience a similar behavior on websites with Flash advertisements and other Flash content.
Flash Control is an extension for the Google Chrome web browser that gives the user full control over Adobe’s Flash plugin. Flash Control blocks all Flash contents on a page by default, and offers manual and automatic options to display and use them. This works very similar to how click to play works in browsers such as Firefox or Chrome, only that it is limited to Flash and no other plugin.
How Flash Control works
The easiest option is to click on the small control in the upper right corner of the Flash element to instantly load it on the page. All, without reloading the whole page.
It is possible to block the Flash element at any time again using the same controls. What makes FlashControl special are the customization options the extension makes available.
Flashcontrol’s options support white- and blacklisting of sites. Whitelisted sites and elements are excluded from being blocked by the extension, while blacklisted sites and elements will always be blocked. It is for instance possible to blacklist specific elements on a site, and whitelist others. That’s a highly flexible way of dealing with Flash contents on the Internet, especially since you can control individual elements on individual web pages, for instance to block Flash ads or content in the sidebar without interfering with the main Flash applet.
A click on the icon in the Chrome Omnibar on the other hand displays additional options and links. It is for instance possible to enable Flash on the active page, unblock the website, add the website to the whitelist, disable the extension and open the options.
The general options are shown in the screenshot above. More interesting than those are the whitelist and blacklist pages to block or allow contents or sites automatically.
Verdict
FlashControl is a solid add-on for Chrome users who want more control over Flash on the web. Especially the option to block specific Flash elements permanently should be interesting to many Internet users. Users who want better control over all plugins, or prefer to use native features instead of another extension, may want to use click to play instead as it provides you with pretty much the same feature set.