Opting-in to plugins in Firefox
11 April, 2012 § 84 Comments
Whether you hate them or love them, content accessed through plugins is still a sizable chunk of the web. So much so, that over 99% of internet users have Flash installed on their browser. However, plugins can also carry with them extra vulnerabilities and system slowdowns.
A couple days ago I landed an initial implementation of “click-to-play plugins” in desktop Firefox. To see and play with the feature, download a Nightly build of Firefox, go to about:config, and enable the plugins.click_to_play flag.
When plugins.click_to_play is enabled, plugins will require an extra click to activate and start “playing” content. This is an incremental step towards securing our users, reducing memory usage, and opening up the web.
I’m currently working on implementing the ability for plugin activation settings to be remembered on a per-site basis. I hope to get these changes landed within the next week before the deadline for Firefox 14.
If you are curious and want to learn more about our plans for opt-in activation of plugins, you can take a look at the feature page on our wiki.
So why does this feature show up in my about:config area in Firefox 11.0 which I’ve had since March 14th when I got it from the update servers? The wording is exactly the same, and when I double click the entry, it changes just like you’d expect it to. To me, that makes it seem as if the feature is already fully functional. If it is, then how’d I get it when I’m only subscribed to the release update channel in the About Firefox info box??
That preference got added when Firefox for Android added click-to-play plugins. It shouldn’t have shown up in desktop Firefox, but unfortunately it did. Sorry for any confusion it may have caused.
[...] un article al bloc de Jared Wein, desenvolupador de Mozilla, la funcionalitat ja està acabada i ara s’està treballant en [...]
[...] 有消息称，Firefox开发人员正考虑将Flash做成浏览器的可选功能，让Firefox在中的Flash默认为“点击后播放”，以便Firefox对使用者来说能运行的更快、更安全。 [...]
i dunno about this feature, it has the potential to break the user experience of any content that users plugins, if i was developing a site with say flash i wouldn’t want the user to have to click something before they can view the content, navigating to the site should be enough of an indication that they want to view the content. If on the other hand this feature was only used for out of date plugins this would be a good addition
[...] 有消息称，Firefox开发人员正考虑将Flash做成浏览器的可选功能，让Firefox在中的Flash默认为“点击后播放”，以便Firefox对使用者来说能运行的更快、更安全。 [...]
+1 for the feature
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[...] 有消息称，Firefox开发人员正考虑将Flash做成浏览器的可选功能，让Firefox在中的Flash默认为“点击后播放”，以便Firefox对使用者来说能运行的更快、更安全。 [...]
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