Mention the words ‘Flash’ and ‘website’ in the same sentence, and you’ll send shivers down the spines of many developers. Adobe’s plugin is notorious for security flaws, hogging resources and crashing.

However, luckily for the millions who despise the addled web application, it’s be taking one more step into the grave.

Google has officially annnounced that from September 1st – yes, next week – its Chrome browser will freeze flash advertisements on webpages. It first made the announcement in June, but it has now detailed what you can do to ensure that your ads are displayed.

In short: most flash-based ads uploaded to AdWords will be converted to HTML5.

If Steve Jobs’ scathing writings about Flash didn’t convince the development community to stop using Flash, maybe this will.

A number of months ago Google updated its Chrome browser with a setting in which people could toggle flash ads, but from the beginning of next month, the setting will be turned on by default.

Jobs has probably been the biggest fighter of Flash, writing in 2010 that Flash was created during the PC era, and is not suitable to the mobile era.

“Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short,” he wrote in his Thoughts on Flash blog post.

[Image – CC by 2.0/pix.plz]