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I don't have adobe flash player installed, and don't miss the flashing ads a bit.

The only thing that annoys me: IE8 keeps asking me "this web site wants to install Adobe Flash Player", and I want to get rid of this question. I don't want to install it, not now, not ever.

So how do I make IE stop asking me about it?

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Why not just convert to using Chrome or Firefox? Then you can have Shockwave Flash installed, but then you can disable it. Any alt graphic content (like SWFObject stuff) will show up but Flash content will not. – nicorellius Mar 18 '10 at 17:09
@nicorellius, actually if he likes IE8 there are ways to get around similarly without the need to change browsers. Changing browsers can be an independent and personal decision. – nik Mar 18 '10 at 17:14
@nicorellius the best way to disable prompts for Flash install on Firefox is to disable the default plugin using about:config, not by installing it and then using flashblock. – Broam Mar 18 '10 at 18:15
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@nicorellius, do you answer windows question with "why not convert to linux/MacOS", too? – Sam Mar 19 '10 at 9:14
I didn't know this board was for taking stabs at people. You know as well as I do that the analogy you made is not even close to what I suggested. It is generally well accepted that IE is less secure as a browser (not to mention, not up to the web standards). It was a polite suggestion, no more. – nicorellius Mar 19 '10 at 14:12
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I don't use IE8, but according to this site,

Internet Explorer 8: IE has the Flash block functionality built-in so you don’t need to install any additional plugins to be able to block flash on IE 8.

Also remember, Flash does not pay on 64-bit IE 8 so you won’t be able to perform the following steps on a 64-bit IE 8, they work well on 32-bit IE 8.

  1. Click on “Tools” and “Manage Add-ons”
  2. Click on the dropdown under show and select “All Add-ons”
  3. Click on “Shockwave Flash Object” and then click on “More Information”
  4. Click on “Remove All Sites” button to remove * sign from the approved list of sites
    and click “Close”.

Now whenever you visit a site which flash on the page, you will see a message on top of the browser asking your approval to run the flash plugin. The approved sites will go to the approved list of sites which is nothing but a whitelist of sites.

That is different from your install adobe problem.
In your case, no sites will be approved.
Does that help?

I think with some more tricks, this can be stopped too.
What I am not too happy with here is, you probably end up installing flash and then blocking it... :-(

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Well, I knew I could disable it after I install it, but I'd prefer a solution where I don't have to install the flash player at all. Oh, and I'd just exchange one question (install?) popping up with another (allow?). – Sam Mar 19 '10 at 9:15
I am hoping there is a way to setup the browser to ignore the question (assume no without asking). Will update if I get the answer. Or, maybe someone here will explain how it cannot be done. – nik Mar 19 '10 at 11:40
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