169330 - Flash click-to-view

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 549697

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Jamie Nicolson]

There have been many bugs opened to block flash ads, and most have been closed
as duplicates of 94035, which would allow you to block media type by site.

I don't like that solution. I would like ALL my flash content to be click-to-view.

Right now if there is Flash content on a page and you don't have the Flash
plugin installed, a box is displayed where the Flash content would be. That box
tells you to "click here to get the plug-in". My UI would look like that, but
instead would say "Click here to run the plug-in".

This is a much easier, more straightforward solution to the problem of flash
ads. Blocking by server doesn't make sense. It's quite possible for a server to
have some Flash content that I want to view (a snazzy menu system, for example),
but to also have some obnoxious ads. It is usually quite clear from the location
of the Flash content whether it is going to be an integral part of the site, or
fluff. A big box in the middle of an otherwise empty page usually means it's a
menu system I want to view, while a smaller box wedged in with a lot of other
content is usually an ad (e.g., New York Times).

Of course this would be some sort of checkbox in the preferences system, since
many people will want to just go ahead and display Flash without having to click
 anything. It could probably dovetail quite nicely with 94035. Instead of
completely disabling a media type, or restricting it to certain sites, you could
mark it "click-to-view" or "click-to-run".

It may make sense for this to be generally applied to all plugins. It might be a
problem for plugins that don't take up a region of the screen (audio plugins?):
where do you click to run them?

PLEASE DO NOT MARK THIS A DUPE OF 94035. It is a different approach to the problem.

Comment 1

[rubydoo123]

this type of work will be addressed in the plug-in manager work, but as
requested I will not dupe against the plug-in manager work

Comment 2

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

I've created a prototype solution for this.  It's based on the Banner Blind
code, so it still loads the plugins, but hides them afterwards.  It's not
complete and has lots of issues.  If you'd like to download and play with it,
you can get it from: http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/pluginask/pluginask.zip

You'll have to install it manually.  The readme is at:
http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/pluginask/README.txt

Any comments are appreciated.

Comment 3

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

Unfortunately this looks like a dupe of bug 137514 which is WONTFIX.

Comment 4

[Jesse Ruderman]

http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/xbl.html includes XBL for blocking Flash in
the way comment #0 describes.  My solution to the "where do you click for tiny
Flash that just plays sound" was to set a min-width and min-height on the Flash
div to 1em, just enough to display a recognizable Flash logo.

I posted the link on bug 94035 before I knew about this bug.

This is not a dup of bug 137514, which asks for a prompt on pages containing
plugins.  Prompts suck.

Comment 5

[Mark Smith [:mcs]]

I filed bug 137514 and I agree this bug proposes a much better solution (really
just a different want of prompting, right ;-) ?

Comment 6

[Jamie Nicolson]

This XBL solution is great! It's amazing that this could be fixed without code
changes to the browser. The great computer science project has paid off.

Comment 7

[(not currently active) Ted Mielczarek]

I packaged this XBL solution as an extension.  Enjoy.

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/flashblock.xpi

Comment 8

[Justin Mason]

As a matter of interest, would this work for Java too?  www.ireland.com
uses (buggy) java applets on each page, and I really get peeved about the
resulting RAM usage from the resulting VM processes.  If I could just
not load any applets unless I press a button, that'd be ideal.

Comment 9

[Andrew Schultz]

*** Bug 315204 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

*** Bug 326020 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***