Ive come across a temp fix, I can successfully run firefox through wine after finding this how-to - http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_flash_player - I skipped over the installing flashplayer 8.5 section and installed it through the browser prompt instead and everything seems to be working ok. This will do, I guess, until adobe provides us with a more stable flash player :-)
-- Flash plugin problem with ARGB visuals causes crash https://launchpad.net/bugs/14911 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs