Fire Fox question...
 

I've been using FF exclusively for a number of years now, and am having an issue that is bothersome lately. The Shockwave Flash player plugin is causing the browser to slow considerably.

To deal with it, I've disabled the plugin, and noticed that the speed of the browser returned.

Now, is there a toolbar toggle I could use to turn it on and off as needed, or am I screwed with having to opening the FF control, add-ons, locating the program and disabling it that way?

This problem wasn't present a few years ago, but seems to have migrated from a glitch to a full on issue since then. I don't know the version number, but it was just updated, and I'm running Windows 8

Go with Chrome, it's much better.

I don't want Google anything on my computer, thanks.

How old is the computer? How much RAM? Video card? And how many windows of what are you looking at when you notice it bogging down? More than likely its the content rather than just the plugins. They can be total hogs, depending on what it is. I like Chrome but it can be a crazy resource hog too, it opens every tab as a separate browser so if you had a few open it can bog down older computers.

If you're running HD video or something it could easily be your computer's specs and being unable to process the data quickly enough rather than just the plugin--disabling the plugin can be preventing it from streaming and processing the data but is not necessarily the cause of the slowdown.

x2 Firefox has been going downhill since FF7.

Have you checked to see what kind of extensions you have enabled?
Could be an add-on which is conflicting with Shockwave.

Try the Mozilla forums here -
Flash causes Firefox to slow down and even freeze (and on a gaming laptop, too). How to fix this? | Firefox Support Forum | Mozilla Support

Use Opera , its far better than firefox ..
that said , i use use firefox . and have for 6+ years ..

on linux mint 14 KDE

2 year old Presario CQ57
AMD C-50 Processor 1.00 GHz
8.0 GB RAM (7.60 usable)
Generic PnP monitor.
I usually have no more than 3 tabs open. The content is generally what's on the news sites, FB, and playing Conquer Club.