Flash Not Working on Firefox: Where to Find Stats?

[pansophia]

I haven't been able to view Flash on Firefox since I upgraded to 1.5x. All I would get on Flash site is a blank page. This was bad for sites entirely based on Flash because there was no error message to tell me Flash content should be there.

Last night I finally put some research into the problem. I followed instructions for all the "known problems" (such as Adblock), but nothing worked. I can't imagine the casual user putting in the amount of work I did, especially if they don't know the problem is on their end (re: they only see a blank page).

I finally installed FlashBlock. Now I can launch a Flash site with the FlashBlock button. This solution is counterintuitive and not elegant. I'd rather know what's causing the problem in the first place.

What I'd really like is to get an overview on how widespread this problem is. There seem to be a lot of people bringing Flash problems to the Mozilla forums, but I'm not sure it's all the same problem. People use different phrases: "Flash doesn't work", "Flash doesn't load", "Flashplayer broken", etc.

Is there any good site that tracks *declining* use of Flash, which might provide an overview of the situation? I know Macromedia has market penetration stats, but they might be inclined to suppress Flash problems by regarding them as temporary glitches.

Thanks in advance for any insights!