Posted by Neil Wyatt on 05/01/2017 16:49:45:
Can anyone else suggest an alternative firefox plugin that works well with the archive? It would be useful to know what to recommend as I get the occasional query like Graham's.
I kind of doubt that you'll find one that's compatible enough.
I don't know what Graham's reasons are for not using the Adobe plugin but the usual one is because of security concerns – where many people decline to use it at all. That seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me.
Any exploit through Flash is going to come from the specific website being viewed. It's better, imo, to install Flash but only allow it to be used on specific, trusted websites …. I'm sure the ME website falls into that category and there are many others. Firefox (and presumably other browsers) allows you to do just that – to set the plugin to ask you before running on a webpage. At that point you can say "no"; or allow it to run just that time; or allow it for that website any time (this is suitable for the ME site for example).
It's anyone's prerogative, of course, simply not to install the Flash plugin if they feel that's the easier way but the price they pay is that some web pages, or whole sites, simply won't be available to them. Nor do alternative plugins necessarily improve matters. Flash (on the website) requires a script to be run on the user's machine. Any time that happens there is a risk whether it's the Adobe plugin or any surrogate.