Since buying my first Mac about a year ago, the biggest thing I’ve missed is being able to run as many Flash movies as I want in my open browser windows and not have to put up with choppy playback. Anyone who has used a Mac has probably noticed this behavior: open more than one Flash movie at a time (although sometimes it only takes one) and they get very very choppy and slow.

Well, until we get that long awaited update to the Netscape plugin architecture, you can try this: When you see a Flash movie start to slow down or get choppy, try clicking and holding your mouse down somewhere inside the movie. It should play at normal speed as long as you hold down the mouse button.

UPDATE: Of course, the same day I post this, Colin Moock posts a video from a Flash conference in Tokyo with a demo of the next version of the Flash player.

UPDATE (11-30-2005): With the release of Firefox 1.5 they have fixed a bug that has been in Firefox since 2001, so the ‘hold your mouse button down to get good performance’ trick is no longer neccesary.