The elephant-sized ad in the room

Those of you not blocking Flash may have noticed the ginormous Apple ad adjacent to the content column. Yeah, a little about that. So a couple of days ago our ad sales team let us know they were going to be running a pretty big experimental placement on the site, which is up just today and tomorrow. (We know what some of you are thinking, and we want to remind everyone that the Engadget editorial team does not sell ads nor have any influence on ad deals. In the biz we call it the separation of church and state -- advertising and editorial -- and it's essential in maintaining editorial integrity.)

We hear that the experimental ad might be causing some issues, though, specifically audio problems, browser crashes, or might be especially taxing on some people's computers. We've been informed that the appropriate ad people have been dispatched and are trying to fix the issue for everyone. But we know that doesn't help you in the here and now, so if you're having problems with the ads you might try turning off Flash. (For your convenience we've posted a few ways to do that after the break.) In the mean time feel free to vent in comments -- we're totally here for you.

Switching off Flash in your browser

IE is kind of complicated. Everyone says use IE7Pro, so that probably is the tool you want to use. (We've also seen a couple of solutions, but nothing else turn-key.)

For Firefox we suggest Flashblock. You can also use AdBlock, but if you do that all the other ads on Engadget won't load, and if enough people turn off all the ads then Engadget ceases to exist. So, you know, do what you think is right.

If you're using Safari try out SafariPlus.

And our personal fave, Opera, makes things pretty simple. You can add an enable / disable plugins check box to your toolbar, or you can go to preferences -> advanced -> content -> (uncheck) enable plugins.

Oh, and there's also a CSS hack or two to do this as well. Let us know if we forgot anything in comments!