Tip: Flash Player Settings Manager

The world of trouble shooting your computer is very complicated once you move to the realm of web stuff. The Internet is no longer just a series of static pages anymore as now you can run full on 3D games through your browser of choice. Programs like System Access from Serotek are real computer applications that can be delivered to you via the net. Streaming video, like content from Hulu, is becoming more popular with first run television series finding a home there for those people who may have not recorded their favorite shows when they aired on the TV networks. But did you know that the Flash Media Player had settings? I mean real nuts and bolts settings? Well it does and the only way you can access these settings is through the web.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager.html

This site will inform you about how much space Flash cookies can take up. It also will allow you to block third party cookies as well as give you some control on how your browser interacts with Flash based content. Now you may be thinking to yourself that you don’t watch YouTube or other web content like that. Where this comes in for general web surfers is in places like your bank or other financial sites. Flash is used by a lot of web sites beyond movies and videos. And more often these days Flash can be used as one level of identifying you as a user of your computer. So having Flash cookies be tracked may not be what you want if you are very security conscious.

The site I list above isn’t very Assistive Technology friendly, however, you should read the accompanying texts on the page in order to know what kinds of controls are available with Flash Media. And remember that Flash will update every so often. So you may need a friend to go back over these settings with you when this happens. Lastly, if you use multiple browsers, these settings aren’t always globally set. Which means you may have to do this for each web browser you use.