macromedia players flash: Sorry for the lengthly posting. But for completeness, here goes:

I find that Flash Player causes IE to flicker

The objects that show most obvious symptoms are simple flash animations. These
simple
animations seem to be made using the sucessive overlay of graphic blocks. Each
overlay
causes a brief flicker. Since these overlays need to be done in quick
sucession to
achive the animated effect, the flickering is very disturbing to the eye.
Since this
basic form of animation is found in many adverts, it is becoming very annoying.
For an example of animated adverts see http://www.nationalrail.co.uk

More advanced flash animations (the ones that have a very smooth movement) do
not
flicker. This may be because they are not composed of overlayed graphics
images.

But there are objects that are not Macromdia Flash objects which also flash.
Since
these are not animated the effect is less noticable. Once again, the flicker
happens
when the object is updated but the update happens less frequently. Usually the
update
happens when the mouse moves over the object but there may be different events
that cause
an update.
The Macromedia web site (by co-incidence) contains a good example of this:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flashplayer/

So the attribute that defines the update behaviour of the object is a crucial
factor in whether the object flickers or not. These attributes are usually
hidden in
an associated style sheet (.css). The usual attribute relates to a background
colour
that comes into effect when a mouse hovers over a href link.
I have html file that I have developed that demonstrates this (Flicker.htm) as
shown in the attached code. The associated Style sheet is themes.css and it
contains the following single line:
a:hover{background-color: #DEF}

I suspect that the macromedia flash objects also use these style sheet
attributes.
I suspect that careful adjustment of the style attributes (eg to use
transparent background)
may solve the problem but this is a server-side solution that does not a
realistic solution.

If you remove Flash Player all of the above flickering problems stop. You can
uninstall
Flash V8 using add/remove programs but an older version can come into
operation. To
completely disable flash you need to look in C:\windows\systrem\macromed\flash
This holds the Flash player OCX control. Rename the files in here to disable
them.

Of course disabling flash is not a good solution because Flash is needed in
many
situations.
Flash v6.0 from the archive:
http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14266
was installed but Flicker Remains.

A new version of Java has been installed. Problem remains.

Display was retrned top VGA mode and NVIDIA graphics software was uninstalled.
Flicker was
still found with flash animated objects. New NVIDIA software installed.
Flicker remains.

A replacement copy of DirectX 9.0c was installed, Flicker remains

IE6 uninstalled and re-installed. Flicker Remains

There seems to be nothing useful in the Advanced tab of Internet Options
There seems to be nothing useful in Control Panel | Display

Screen update frequency seems to have no bearing on our problem.

So my current diagnosis is as follows:
Macromedia flash player inserts itself into the IE screen object update
process.
Although it only needs to do this to handle the Flash objects, non-flash
objects
also pass through. In our situation, some interaction between flash player
and IE or WinME (or something) causes flash player to introduce flicker into
the
update process. Style attributes make the effect visible.

There are numerious internet references to flicker on IE6 ... eg
http://www.brunildo.org/test/IEAbackima.html
http://www.fivesevensix.com/studies/ie6flicker
If.. you have Internet Options | Temporary Internet Files | Settings | Check
for newer versions of stored pages: Every visit to the page
Then.. When the object is sensitive to mouse hover then the object will
re-load itself
and sometimes the reload causes flicker if the background or transparency is
not set right.
This is similar to our proble but it is NOT THE SAME PROBLEM AS OURS.

My setup: WinME + IE6 SP1




<title>Flicker Demo</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="themes.css" />

<body>

<h3>If you hover the mouse over the link under the gifs, the bottom line of
the gifs will flicker</h3>
<img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img
src="WINLOGO.gif">
<img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img
src="WINLOGO.gif">
<h3><a href="AnyOldLink">You may need to move over me quickly a few times to
get the flicker effect</a></h3>
<p></BR></p>
<h3>But below, we have put a new-line seperator between the gifs and the
links</BR>
So if you hover the mouse over the link the gifs do not flicker</h3>
<img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img
src="WINLOGO.gif">
<img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img src="WINLOGO.gif"><img
src="WINLOGO.gif">
<p></BR></p>
<h3><a href="AnyOldLink">You may need to move over me quickly a few times to
get the flicker effect</a></h3>
<p></BR></p>
<h3>But we must make sure that the Macromedia flash player plug-in is
loaded</BR>
Otherwise the flickering effect will not be present. So below we are loading
a
dummy flash object (invisible)...</h3>
<embed id="globalnav-embed" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
</embed>

</body>

Sorry to get your hopes up to see a reply Winter,
but I just want to keep this post going because I have the same problem with
websites that use flash ads, gamespot is one for example. I also agree that
flash is indeed the problem here, because I deleted flash, just like the OP,
and the flickering/blinking stopped.

It is incredibly distracting and straining to try to read a page while
everything around the text is flickering white.

Thanks
Bowley

.

No help here either, but.....

We started having this problem about a week ago - not sure what changed to
make it happen, but the only way we can use ie is to disable the flash plugin
otherwise it flickers anytime flash is on a page.

Wonder if nvidia is the suspect as we have nvidia graphics hardware too.

I just installed Mozilla and downloaded the flash player and hey presto - no
more flicker, so it would appear that ie is the root of the problem.

Mozilla is not the work around of choice, but for now it will just have to do
I suppose - would be interested to hear if anyone else figures this out though
as would like to get my ie back up and running.

We have just begun to notice this happening around our corp after installing
the lastest upgrade to GoToMyPc. Only happens in IE. My IE install uses player
v8 where my FF uses v7 and has no flicker. does anyone else have GoToMyPC that
is experiencing this?

Hi everyone,

Also not going to offer a solution, but I wanted to see if what we're
experiencing is the same issue you all are talking about. I wrote a simple
little photo rotating thing with simple mask transitions. It reads an XML file
from the server and loads up the photos. When it was on our development servers
internally, it worked flawlessly. Once we pushed it live, it started acting up
in IE 6 (not in IE 5, strangely enough). The Flash will not start running until
the mouse moves over it. It also seems to be affecting the CSS rollovers in the
main menu at the top of the page.

Here are some sites as a perfect example of this horribly annoying problem.
These site are all running off the same templates. The simple little Flash
piece I wrote is right below the menu near the top of the page.

Here are some of the sites:
www.phoenixnewtimes.com
www.westword.com
www.miaminewtimes.com
www.newtimesbpb.com
(there are 7 others using the same templates)

Maybe someone will have a solution soon. We hope so. We're considering
replacing the Flash component with a JavaScript version.

Thanks!

Andy Frey
New Times Media, LLC
Phoenix, AZ
andy.frey@newtimes.com
ofc 602.407.1707

We discovered what is causing the problem on our sites.

In IE, you must be specific with the WIDTH and HEIGTH in the embed/object
tags. If you do not set specific width and height parameters for the Flash
object, IE starts flaking out and doesn't start up the Flash code or anything.
It also causes problems in CSS rollovers and such.

Thank you, Microsoft, for such a wonderful piece of junk.

We experience the problem. IE is fine until any flash object is loaded then any
mouse over point (hyper links even) causes what looks like screen redraw
(flicker) to happen.

We do not have GoToMyPC. It's a Intel video chipset (ie Not nVidia) Win XP Pro
sp2.

Have tried uninstalling Flash and Video card without resolution.

....bump...

Still having the same problem, I've resorted to just uninstalling flash, it's
almost like cheating, all those flash adds suck anyway.
The problem with that is when you run into a website that is all flash...but
those are few and far between.

My story so far: Flash-Player V7: no problem in ANY browser on my XPpro SP2.
Updated to V8: ONLY IE is flickering, no other browser is.
Simple conclusion: IE sucks or V8 makes it to suck, either way.
Uninstalled V8 - no more flicker! Installed V7 - no flicker.
Re-installed V8 - on activating Direct-X flickering already starts, in fact
before the V8 was completed.
My guess: something wrong with the direct-X stuff?
Or IE, or Windows, or my PC, or my PCI-Expres ATI driver, or my wife, or the
&?"'(? world...?????????

Meanwhile: i'll be waiting for all the experts answers out there - or thinking
about going Pinguin.

my .5 ?