Reduce battery usage by controlling Flash in Safari

If you use Safari and a laptop, you may be surprised to find that sites that incorporate Flash may be draining your battery. Unless you're one of those people who browse with Activity Monitor open, you're probably not aware that many sites are sucking your battery dry. Many sites incorporate Flash, in particular to display advertisements. These little Flash tidbits may be poorly written, and can make your CPU work really hard. This, in turn, will drain your battery at a fast rate. 

You can prevent Flash from automatically loading in Safari using Safari Stand. Install it, launch Safari, go to the Stand menu, choose SafariStand Setting, then click on Advanced. Check the Load Plug-in Manually box in the Flash section and restart Safari. 

Now when your browser encounters Flash, you can click the box where the Flash would have been to load that bit of Flash. You can also add exceptions to the site alteration area -- for example, you might want to let Flash automatically load when you visit youtube.com.