Chrome will 'intelligently' pause Flash content like auto-playing ads

Few things are more annoying on the internet than auto-playing Flash ads, especially if it has audio. If you don't already have an ad-blocker installed, then you might want to consider getting the upcoming version of Chrome. Google has announced today that it's been working with Adobe to introduce an update to Chrome that will "intelligently pause content that aren't central to the webpage." That means that the browser will automatically halt auto-playing Flash content on the sidebar, for example, but will still let that Flash video in the middle -- arguably the reason you're on that webpage in the first place -- play away. And just in case you do want to watch that ad for whatever reason, you can click it to enable playback.

According to Google, it's doing this to reduce power consumption on laptops, but we can't help but think this is pretty darn useful for anyone who wants a better surfing experience. If you want to try this out for yourself right now, you can go ahead and download the latest desktop beta of Chrome, where it's enabled by default. But if you want to give it a go without doing that, you can actually enable it right now with your existing Chrome browser. Simply go into Settings, select "Show advanced settings," then select the content settings for Privacy and then select "Detect and run important plugin content."

[Image credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]