1289496 - Ask to Activate makes Flash plugin dropdown appear on every github pageload

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Josh Matthews [:jdm]]

Since bug 1186948 landed, the "github.com wants to use Adobe Flash" popup appears on every single github.com page that is loaded, since they use it for copying text to the clipboard. This is made worse by the fact that the only options it contains are "Allow" and "Allow and Remember", when what I really want is "Never bother me ever again".

[Tracking Requested - why for this release]: Hugely irritating user experience regression.

Comment 1

[Ryan VanderMeulen [:RyanVM]]

Attachment: confused doorhanger

This feels like the return of bug 1284203. Also, it's pretty easy to confuse the doorhanger for what site it's even showing the prompt for, as shown in this screenshot. Which is obviously pretty sub-optimal :)

Comment 2

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Yeah, I'm getting this on Yahoo search pages as well. :/

https://www.google.com/adsense/search/async-ads.js is being used on the Yahoo search, and it appears to iterate the navigator.plugins list.

I suspect there's something similar on the GitHub site. blassey - what was the plan for this sort of stuff? I agree this is super irritating.

Comment 3

[Fanolian]

Some pages that pop up the prompt directly on load (which is a new effect after bug 1186948):
https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer.html
http://wwwns.akamai.com/hdnetwork/demo/flash/default.html

but not for some others (same as before bug 1186948):
https://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
http://video.fc2.com/en/content/20100330U01W3CqR

Is the new effect (pop up on load) intended by bug 1186948?

Comment 4

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Going to back out bug 1186948 if we don't hear back from blassey this afternoon.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I am getting this on every BMO bug pageload (/ reload), too. (with the experimental UI, which probably includes some flash for copypasting in the background)

Comment 6

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Just heard from blassey:

He's going to work on a patch to show just the icon in the URL bar, and not show the full-blown doorhanger in the case that some page script is scanning the plugins list. That'll get rid of the annoyingness at least for now, but I'm gonna ni? bsmedberg on this for figuring out how we want to deal with this long-term.

I talked to RyanVM about doing a respin, but he thinks we should probably just live with this for a day (since we already did a Nightly respin today).

Comment 7

[Andrew Halberstadt [:ahal]]

Likely also related to bug 1186948 is that flash no longer shows up on:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/

Not a huge deal as long as Firefox still warns when there is a vulnerability. But still something that might warrant fixing.

Comment 9

[V. Korn]

I dont know how special my situation but i see that Flash dropdown on literally ALL sites, on every page reload. I see it on pages that cannot have any Flash (or even javascript), like 404 default error pages.
Flash plugin dropdown also appears even on sites where Flash is set to Block in site permissions and, for matter of absurd, even on any view-source pages (CTRL+U)

I use latest (26.07.2016) nightly on Linux (Ubuntu 16.04). Only one unususal thing, i can mention  - i use Fresh Player wrapper.

Comment 10

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

The view source part sounds particularly odd.

blassey: ^-- just fyi...

Comment 11

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

Attachment: dont_show_doorhanger.patch

Comment 12

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Comment on attachment 8774889 [details] [diff] [review]
dont_show_doorhanger.patch

Driveby nit on the whitespace change in this patch:

>+++ b/browser/modules/PluginContent.jsm
>     if (eventType == "HiddenPlugin") {
>       let pluginTag = event.tag.QueryInterface(Ci.nsIPluginTag);
>       if (event.target.defaultView.top.document != this.content.document) {
>-	return;
>+          return;

Hooray for fixing a bogus "tab" character here -- though, this line is still misindented. (Needs to be deindented by 2 spaces, and then it'll be correct.)

Comment 13

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Comment on attachment 8774889 [details] [diff] [review]
dont_show_doorhanger.patch

Review of attachment 8774889 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

r=me with dholbert's indentation issue addressed.

Tested locally, and this is much, much less irritating.

Comment 14

[Brad Lassey [:blassey] (use needinfo?)]

For reference, original discussion of to show the door hanger or not was in bug 1284445.

Comment 15

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/86ee73866fc0
Ask to Activate makes Flash plugin dropdown appear on every github pageload r=mconley

Comment 16

[V. Korn]

Attachment: 2016-07-27_01-23-39.jpg

(In reply to Mike Conley (:mconley) - (Needinfo me!) from comment #10)
> The view source part sounds particularly odd.
> 
> blassey: ^-- just fyi...

Proof of absurd

Comment 17

[V. Korn]

Uggghhh, i found that caused "Flash plugin dropdown madness" for me - it was FlashHider addon (which basically do similar "dont detect Flash, fallback to HTML5" thing) - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashhider/
There was no such problem before, looks like it doesnt like only current Nightly. Disabling it reduces problem (mostly) to just like everyone else observing.
Sorry for bugspam.

Comment 18

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Tracking 50+ so as to not have the doorhanger show every time.

Comment 19

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/86ee73866fc0

Comment 20

[Benjamin Smedberg]

+Bram who is the UX designer working on CtP plugins for Flash.

My understanding of the desired behavior is that when a site is enumerating navigator.plugins or navigator.mimeTypes and Flash is click-to-activate, we want to:

* show the notification icon in the URLbar
* do not drop down the notification (we do not ever want the notification to autoshow)
* show the hidden-plugin infobar

The only problem I see with this is that if/when the user chooses to activate Flash while there is no Flash on the page, we really want to reload the page, instead of just turning on the Flash elements that already exist on the page.

What is the actual in-product behavior right now? (and in 50 aurora, I presume)

Comment 21

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg [:bsmedberg] from comment #20)
> What is the actual in-product behavior right now? (and in 50 aurora, I
> presume)

The actual in-product behaviour right now is:

When a site is enumerating navigator.plugins or navigator.mimeTypes and Flash is click-to-activate, we:

* show the notification icon in the URLbar
* do not drop down the notification (we do not ever want the notification to autoshow)

We do not currently show the hidden-plugin infobar.