61333 - Allow default plug-in to be turned off globally/for MIME types

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 61103

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Tim Taylor]

An alternate summary for this RFE could be "less annoying default plug-in
dialog".  The current "default plug-in" has the same annoyance factor as turning
on "prompt before accepting cookies" prior to the "remember this decision" feature.

Fix: add support for remembering the user's decision about downloading a plug-in
for the site, ala the "accept cookie" and "download image" dialogs.

I'm not certain what exactly should be rememberd.  Would it mean "remember this
decision for all plug-ins of type foo/bar"?  Or instead, "remember this decision
for all plug-ins on this site"?  Perhaps both should be possible.  My current
need is for the former, because, for instance, I choose /not/ to have the Flash
or Shockwave plug-ins installed.  However, say I /do/ want an audio plug-in
installed, there are still sites that I would want to block from using that plug-in.

Comment 1

[av (gone)]

On Windows it currently 'remembers' mime types and does not pop it up when sees 
the mime type already seen. Is it what are you talking about? If so, this is 
already done on Windows, so we need to adjust platform for this bug.

Comment 2

[Tim Taylor]

Yes, that is what I mean.  Changing platform and OS.

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

"Cancel" at one point did a permanent "remember for this mime type" and even 
made a registry entry for it.  (I'm not sure if it's still happening.)  That 
might be the expected behavior, but it doesn't really make sense (users should 
feel safe clicking "cancel" buttons.)  

To make a "remember this decision" label more clear (this is a problem in many 
dialogs), how about "Don't prompt me again for this mime type (application/x-
shockwave-flash)"?

See also bug 60680, which can cause the default plugin to pop up a second new 
window without even reloading a page.

Comment 4

[Tim Taylor]

Confirming that this bug doesn't occur in Windows build 2000120704.  The
behavior implemented in the Windows build doesn't exist in the Linux build, or
is broken.

Changing severity to normal.  Someone want to confirm this bug for Linux?

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

av: I think the checkbox should be added for all platforms.  When I 
click "cancel" on a dialog, I don't expect any permanent changes to happen.  

If there are any bugs left after the checkbox is added (such as remembering not 
working on Linux), it will be more obvious that they are bugs.

Comment 6

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

`Don't ask me again' is bad. `Always ask me when ...' is good. You shouldn't turn 
a checkbox on in order to turn something off.

I suggest adding a `Never' button which turns off the default plugin for that 
particular MIME type, and an `Always alert me about unknown file types' checkbox 
which (if unchecked) turns the default plugin off completely.

Note that we also need UI in the Applications category of prefs, with an `Ignore' 
value for those MIME types which we have chosen not to display.

Comment 7

[karnaze (gone)]

Marking future and reassigning to chrisn.

Comment 8

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This looks to be covered between bug 61103 and bug 83754.  The former asks for a
way to disable the dialog, the latter will eliminate the dialog completely.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 61103 ***

Comment 9

[shrirang khanzode]

mass duplicate verifications . For filtering purposes, pls use keywd
"massdupverification"