Mike is frustrated because one of the government real estate websites he visits requires Microsoft Silverlight, and they don't support it anymore. Leo says that everyone has moved away from Flash-like players that require a plug-in in favor of HTML 5. But it's not unusual that government hasn't caught up to the new thinking. Leo thinks government should never require proprietary plugins.
Matthew is a kid and he wants to run a plugin for the Minecraft home server. Leo says that to use the Mojang server, you have to use the plugins. There's a plugin folder on the server and that's where the plugins go. Then restart the server and it should see it.
Art has issues with Windows 10 giving him an error message for shutting down. Leo says that Internet Explorer on Windows 10 isn't the default browser, Edge is. It has been in a kind of unfinished state until recently, though. If Internet Explorer is crashing a lot, Art should clear the history/cache and reset the browser. Leo says that the most common cause of crashing in Internet Explorer is plugins. So there's probably a bad extension in there that's causing it to hang up. It could also be a damaged version of Flash.
Julian is visually impaired and is frustrated by popups that he can't see when he's using his screen reader, because it takes forever to read them all. He needs a good ad blocker that can prevent them. Leo says that this is one case where ad blockers are a good ethical use. Leo recommends the FireFox extension UBlock Origin. It's also available on Google Chrome. Advertising is important, as it helps to pay the bills online.
Analyzing the tracking services on any given website, Privacy Badger is a new plugin by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to guard against spying of your activity online.
Arelia is having issues with her browser and she thinks it may be due to a plugin she installed. Leo says she's probably right. Plugins like Flash, Shockwave or Java are easily hackable and dangerous if not kept up to date.
Leo recommends using Google Chrome. Chrome has Flash built in and it's always updated. If she likes the browser she's using, then she'll have to get the latest version of Flash from Adobe.
Louis has a Wordpress blog and wants to know what the best option is for backing it up. Leo says that if his ISP or blog service doesn't offer a backup, then he's on his own. There are Wordpress plugins that do this and Leo uses them as a second line of defense. It essentially backs up the Blog database and customization. It would let him know by email when it backs up and when it fails.
Audi is into podcasting and he says it's very frustrating to get podcasts on all the available sites. He found a cool plugin called "PowerPress." He says it lets him control cover art and print tags in iTunes. It gives full control over a podcast feed. Leo says it's a great plugin, but it doesn't really work inside WordPress.com. He'll have to run his own, hosted version of Wordpress. But it works great. Another alternative is LibSyn.
Justin has been having trouble printing International eBay labels for the Mac, so he downloaded a PDF browser plugin to get around the issue. Now that the issue has been fixed, he can't get the plugin to go away.
Joan likes to watch TV on her Mac, but now she's getting a message about a blocked plugin. Leo says that Apple keeps a list of "unsafe" programs on Joan's Mac and all she needs to do is download and install the new Flash player. Once that's done, Apple will view it as safe again.
