Install Adobe Flash for Firefox properly

Let’s see how to install Adobe Flash under Ubuntu for Firefox properly.

Visit the official site (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/) and download the .tar.gz file. Create a temporary directory (e.g. /tmp/flash) and save the file there. This archive is a tarbomb, that’s why we put it in a dedicated folder.

Unzip the archive. There is a “usr” subfolder whose owner and group must be set before copying it to “/usr“. Switch to root (with “su“) and perform the following actions:

1. chown -R root:root usr (where “usr” is the subfolder from the archive, not the system folder)
2. copy this “usr” folder to “/usr“, i.e. copy it to the system folder

(Of course, you can also do these steps with “sudo” too.)

Finally, copy the file “libflashplayer.so” to the directory “$HOME/.mozilla/plugins/“. It’s very likely that this folder doesn’t exist yet so create it first.

Restart Firefox and enjoy the ultimate Flash experience :)

Put a text on the clipboard from your webpage

Problem
From an HTML page you want to copy some text on the clipboard by pressing a button.

Example: on a page you present a list of URLs. Next to each URL there is a button. If the user clicks on the button, the corresponding URL is copied to his/her clipboard.

Solution
You can use clippy for this task. “Clippy is a very simple Flash widget that makes it possible to place arbitrary text onto the client’s clipboard.“

Here is an HTML template that you must paste in your HTML: clippy.html. Simply replace “{{ clippy_text }}” and “{{ bgcolor }}” with the values you want.

Update (20130103)
GitHub also used clippy but recently they switched to ZeroClipboard. Here is their announcement.

Free Online Clocks for Your Website or Blog

http://24timezones.com/online_clock.php

Customize the clock, copy the generated code and paste it in your website or blog.

Youtube audio player

At http://www.labnol.org/internet/youtube-audio-player/26740/ I found a nice trick to embed just a part of the Youtube Flash player, thus the player looks like an audio player. All you need is a little CSS trick:

• template
• concrete example

Problems with Flash? Try Flash-Aid!

Problem
Flash sucks.

Solution
If you have problems with Flash under Ubuntu (who doesn’t?), try the Firefox add-on Flash-Aid.

“Remove conflicting flash plugins from Ubuntu/Debian Linux systems, install the appropriate version according to system architecture and apply some tweaks to improve performance and fix common issues.“

Thank you Adobe

Flash videos are blue

Problem
Since a few days ago, Flash videos became blue on Ubuntu.

Solution
Create the folder “/etc/adobe” and add the following lines to “/etc/adobe/mms.cfg”:

EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1 
OverrideGPUValidation=true

_{This tip is from here.}

Update (20120529)
Warning! According to ebooksoffers, this patch makes Flash unstable. If Flash starts to crash a lot, reverse these changes.

Windows Really Good Edition

http://sirkan.iit.bme.hu/~kapolnai/fun/winrg.html

It’s a funny interactive Flash-based Windows parody.