First of all, I wanted to use yum so I could avoid all dependency issues (not to mention it makes everything really easy). So that yum would know where to look for 32-bit Firefox distributions, I added a file named fedora-base-i386.repo in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory, including this text (thanks to this forum for the mostly correct info):

[base-i386]
name=base-i386
baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=0

Having already un-installed my 64-bit Firefox, I ran the yum install for the 32-bit Firefox like so:
yum --enablerepo=base-i386 install firefox.i386
and Firefox 32-bit was installed.

One remaining problem were the old Firefox extensions in the .mozilla/firefox/.../extensions/ directory, but I just moved them all into another folder.

Next, I downloaded Flash 7, extracted the file and ran the installer only to get the error message that Flash wouldn’t work with 64-bit architecture.

Here I found the suggestion to change the Flash installation file (flashplayer-installer) so that it doesn’t look for i386 architecture. Under the commented line “# check architecture” in the flashplayer-installer file, I changed i[3456]86) to x86_64), and it worked perfectly.

Missing most Flash-designed sites was no great loss, but now I can visit Homestar Runner and YouTube. And there’s no noticeable performance loss in using 32-bit Firefox instead of the 64-bit.

I view it as a personal failure that Flash collected the bronze medal for annoyance. It’s been three years since I launched a major effort to remedy Flash problems and published the guidelines for using Flash appropriately. When I spoke at the main Flash developer conference, almost everybody agreed that past excesses should be abandoned and that Flash’s future was in providing useful user interfaces.

Despite such good intentions, most of the Flash that Web users encounter each day is bad Flash with no purpose beyond annoying people. The one bright point is that splash screens and Flash intros are almost extinct. They are so bad that even the most clueless Web designers won’t recommend them, even though a few (even more clueless) clients continue to request them.

Flash is a programming environment and should be used to offer users additional power and features that are unavailable from a static page. Flash should not be used to jazz up a page. If your content is boring, rewrite text to make it more compelling and hire a professional photographer to shoot better photos. Don’t make your pages move. It doesn’t increase users’ attention, it drives them away; most people equate animated content with useless content.

Using Flash for navigation is almost as bad. People prefer predictable navigation and static menus.

Nielsen is right that Flash can have useful applications, but as he also points out, most of the time it’s used just for the “wow” effect. And with Google’s creativity showing how far one can go with “Ajax”-based apps, the number of situations in which Flash is necessary is shrinking.

What I dislike about Flash the most and what makes it an anomaly on the Internet is that it’s a proprietary standard. You have to run software made by Macromedia in order to view Flash. Unfortunately, when Macromedia decides it doesn’t want to port Flash to a given operating system (as it has done with mine, Linux 64-bit), then users are out in the cold. The number of those users is bound to increase, as mobile phones with web access become more common. Almost no other significant web technology is proprietary. From serving web pages to browsing them, you can do it all with open-source applications. Why should Flash be the exception?