This thread has touched off some conversation thankfully. However, that said, everything listed here so far would still require libflashplayer.so to enable flash sites. Fresh Player Plugin was mentioned a couple of posts ago, and I also mentioned it in the OP of this thread. It is not a viable solution at this time. After extended use/uptime, cpu and memory use remain a valid concern. As I originally posted, I am in no way endorsing Chrome, but at this time, it appears to be the only viable solution for enjoying fully functioning flash sites. It also appears that they (Google) are keeping a pretty firm grip on the PPAPI. As of this posting, Pepper, (PPAPI) is still the only real alternative to Mozilla's, and indeed, every other browsers flash abilities I've tried.
Adobe is not going to bend in this matter and suddenly decide to start making updates to flash for Linux. It is just not going to happen. Until Flash is dead and gone, this is going to be a recurring issue for Linux users. Flash is IMO ready for the dustbin of software history. Why it hasn't found its way there yet is beyond me. HTML5 and CSS3 are good and viable solutions widely used now around the world. It is approaching "delusional" status IMO that some are still pushing Flash. It is a known nightmare of security flaws and bugs.
Unfortunately Pepper (PPAPI) is only available in Chrome. PPAPI will not work for other browsers as there is no way to install a PPAPI plugin – they have to be installed by Chrome, and there is no way for third parties to do that at this time, and as far as I can tell, no plans for Google to make it possible.
If I am wrong in this conclusion, please don't hesitate to post here and shine some light on what for me has resulted only in darkness...