Last week I went on a little rant about Adobe’s inane method of installing Flash on Windows (in Firefox). I received a few emails from people pointing out the much better way of installing Flash - just download the .exe installer! Sounds simple, but good luck actually finding that on Adobe’s website (while using Firefox anyway - they do UA sniffing to make you use the extension). I’d known that this existed and this was exactly what I was expecting. I just couldn’t find that page with minimal effort, so I thought I’d rant.

I was also directed towards the Installing the Flash Plugin article on the Mozilla Support website. The support moderators have dealt with the experience I had and spent a lot of time getting the support article right.

That article explain 2 methods of installing Flash, neither of with involves Adobe DLM:

1. Install Flash through the missing plugin dialog. This involves simply going to a page that requires Flash (without the usual JS fallback, ie. not YouTube) and getting prompted by Firefox to install Flash for you.
2. Installing via the .exe installer. There is a direct link to the page on Adobe’s site where you can download the actual installer.

So there are sane ways to get Flash installed. Adobe just doesn’t promote them.

I got a 2nd computer at work which I’ve installed Windows 7 onto. So I wanted to finally see the Out Of Process Plugins coming in Firefox 3.6.4. It’s a new computer, so I still need to install Flash. No problem, right? Wrong!

Pretend for a moment that a helpful Adobe customer service agent is helping your mother install Flash:

1. You need Flash! Go download it.
2. Oh and by the way, we’re going to trick you into installing some McAffee product that you don’t want! I mean, we’re not tricking you, we’re helping you…
3. Oh you’re using Firefox? We have an awesome way of installing Adobe products: an extension! You know that way you normally install things on a Windows computer, fuck it! Trust us, this is wayyyy better!
4. Ok, so since we’re not doing this like you would expect, you’re probably confused by what’s happening now. So we’re going to give you a link to a page that’s going to make you more confused! Oh yea, we’re going to make you edit Firefox options that you didn’t know existed. We’re also going to show you instructions for an old version of Firefox (we know, Firefox 2 came out 4 years ago, but it’s still awesome!), so those pictures don’t match up with what’s actually happening to you. Oh and one more thing. We know you’re installing Flash, but these instructions are for Adobe Reader. I mean, they’re the same, so that big title that says “Adobe Reader Installation Instructions” shouldn’t confuse you at all. If it does, you’re dumb!
5. Our bad, just click that ‘Allow’ button up at the top of Firefox, but under the tabs. It’s a little yellow. It’s really easy to see. Found it yet? No? That’s cool, I guess we didn’t explain this very well. Moving on.
6. Sweet, so now we’re installing an extension! WOOOOO!! It’s called ‘Adobe DLM’, not Flash. Oh you didn’t read the fine print? Yea we said we might use the Adobe Download Manager, so we’re doing that. But we didn’t actually want to say ‘Download Manager’ when you were installing - we thought that might get confusing.
7. Right, so since this is a Firefox extension, we’re going to need you to restart Firefox. I mean, we needed to do that anyway, so let’s just get it out of the way. Go ahead, you definitely want to do that. BUT we’re going to make you figure that out yourself. Oh? You didn’t notice that little bar in Firefox that said you need to restart? Oh well. Find it and press it. We’re almost done now!
8. So now you’ve restarted Firefox, you get an awesome Windows alert asking if you want to let Adobe DLM make changes to your computer. You definitely want to press ‘Yes’. Still with us? Ok, so just let Adobe Download Manager do it’s thing (yes, DLM is an abbreviation for ‘Download Manager’, you didn’t figure that out on your own?).
9. And we’re done!
10. By the way, we’re just going to leave this extension installed. That way when we want to fuck you in the ass, we can. Have a nice day ;)

FUCK YOU ADOBE!