Adobe’s Flash technology is one of the crucial technologies that made YouTube.com, among others, a success. However, not everyone loves Flash. I, for one, hate it. And so does Apple, if I can be bold enough to say it, since Apple does not support Flash on the iPhone.

Currently, it is close to impossible not to encounter Flash on your favorite websites. A majority of the online advertisement that you see are done in Flash. So, if you are like me, a Flash-hater, what do you do to remove it?

Firefox’s plug-in/add-on technology made it easy to remove Flash from the websites. All you need is the FlashBlock plug-in/add-on. The extra software detects Flash and prevents it from loading until you click on it. In addition, this also prevents Flash-based adverts. Best of all, it is free.

The plug-in/add-on also provides a way for you to whitelist sites with Flash. This way, you don’t need to click on the Flash element to load it. Sites like YouTube.com may be a possible whitelist candidate. IN my case, it is not since I prefer H.264 versions of the videos -- higher quality and better plug-in (the player).

Safari users used to be left out when it comes to third-party plug-ins. However, there is a new plug-in that works as good as FlashBlock. ClickToFlash is a Safari plug-in that functions the same way as the Firefox version. You need to click on the Flash element to load it. If it detects a better version of the video, i.e., H.264, it presents it and loads it when clicked.

Look at the screenshots of YouTube.com and one of the local news site that uses tons of Flash-based adverts, which are really annoying.

Why do I hate Flash? Well, it is a resource hog and the plug-in is so unstable that it makes the browsing experience unpleasant. It is almost always the cause of a browser crash. It is so bad that Apple decided to implement Safari 4 to not crash when a plug-in crashes!

You must have heard of Flash coming to mobile phones - well, good luck with that! :) I am glad that the iPhone is still free of Flash on the browser. You might say that Flash can be compiled into a native iPhone app -- true, but I really doubt that it will last for long.

A few SDK tweaks from Apple, which is not far from happening, and all those Flash-to-native-iPhone apps will start crashing. Personally, I’d rather not use it yet -- at least until Apple fully supports it.

If you really want to develop media-rich applications that runs like Flash (heck even better), then I suggest that you learn HTML5, Javascript and CSS.

Believe me, the more apps are developed using these three technologies, the more chances that we can get Flash off of our computers and mobile phones. What are you waiting for?