66644 - [RfE] Mozilla should have preference for switching off Flash support etc.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 19118

(SeaMonkey :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Mark Slater]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows NT)
BuildID:    20010124

Mozilla should offer option to switch off flash, shockwave and other rich media 
support.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Goto news.com
2. Open any article
3. Swear demonically as your precious bandwidth is wasted on downloading those 
damn flash banners

After seeing flash being used ever more in more... "intrusive" ways *cough* 
banner ads *cough*, i think the option to switch off flash support (and other 
stuff, for that matter [beatnik, realplayer etc.]) would be really really cool. 
probably easier said than done, too =)

Will add screenshot of preferences.

Comment 1

[Mark Slater]

Attachment: Proposed look of preferences window

Comment 2

[Stephan Niemz]

Confirming and over to Prefs.

Comment 3

[Jure Repinc (JLP)]

That would be realy nice.

Comment 4

[timeless]

I'd much prefer a plugin arbitrator. Something that allows you to disable 
plugins entirely, or change what mime types they handle.  Since it would be 
similar to helper applications, it should either go in that, or as 
Navigator\Plugins.

=>UIDF for comments.

Comment 5

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

In the helper apps prefs for each MIME type, in addition to `Mozilla' `Ask me', 
`Save to Disk', `Foo application', and `Bar plugin', we could have `Ignore'.

Comment 6

[sean echevarria]

note related bug 19118

Comment 7

[Thomas Winzig]

I think, in addition to the global on/off switch for these plugins, you should 
be able to do it on a domain name basis as well. When you enter a domain to be 
blocked (or allowed), you specify which plugins out of the ones installed 
should be allowed/disallowed.

For example, right now I would just disable flash for go.com and 
news.com/cnet.com, because those are the only sites I visit where they are 
doing annoying flash ads.

Comment 8

[timeless]

Thomas Winzig <[e-mail]> please don't change the scope or focus of a 
bug report. We try to limit bugs to a single issue. I suspect what you want is 
already possible, please search bugzilla for site prefs bugs.

Comment 9

[Thomas Winzig]

I'm sorry, I was trying to suggest the original feature request be usurped by 
my idea.

Comment 10

[Martin Petricek]

I think that when the window saying "You need a plugin to view Shockwave Flash,
press ok to download." that pops up when you don't have the plugin installed
should contain also "No, and never bother me with that again" besides the "OK
and "cancel" buttons

Comment 11

[basic]

Seems like this bug is moving towards a plugin manager of sorts (kind of like
the cookie manager).

Comment 12

[Jesse Ruderman]

Would it be sufficient to be able to uninstall plug-ins you don't want, and be 
able to temporarily disable all plug-ins (or disable all plug-ins for a given 
site)?  I can't think of many situations where I'd want to allow Flash but not 
Java, for example.

Comment 13

[Martin Petricek]

Well, I think it should be treated like cookies and images - you can have sites
with allowed/disallowed cookies, with allowed and disallowed images, so you
should have also list for allowing/disallowing plugins form certain sites, or do
it like images - have option to disallow rich media (plugins) from different
domains.

Comment 14

[timeless]

if i'm testing fallback, i'd want to be able to individually disable plugins.

Comment 15

[Zach Lipton [:zach]]

Chaning the qa contact on these bugs to me. MPT will be moving to the 
owner of this component shortly. I would like to thank him for all his hard 
work as he moves roles in mozilla.org...Yada, Yada, Yada...

Comment 16

[HJ]

Attachment: Screenschot of H-J's Macromedia Flash Blocker

Comment 17

[HJ]

Can this be of any help??

Comment 18

[HJ]

Attachment: Screenshot of Flash Manager

Comment 19

[HJ]

Attachment: Screenshot when this pref("flashblocker.enabled", false); is set

Comment 20

[HJ]

Attachment: Screenshot from Image Manager when pref("flashblocker.enabled", false); (no tab!!)

Comment 21

[HJ]

BTW I'm working on an more powerfull version right now.

O Play Macromedia Flash files only once
O Use Macromedia Flash file settings
O Never play Macromedia Flash files

/H-J.

Comment 22

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

updating to new owner. sorry for the spam.

Comment 23

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

*** Bug 86244 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 24

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Bah.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 19118 ***

Comment 25

[Neil Pryde]

So, now you have one bug less Matthew. That other bug is not assigned to you!
Also note that that other bug is about a Plugin manager and not about blocking
Flash!

Yeah yeah, I hear you. You would say:" But IF that Plugin manager is capable of
setting the Mime-Type to none then there will be NO Flash content rendered.
That's right, but IF you do not use Mozilla at all, it won't render anything!

Comment 26

[Jesse Ruderman]

Bug 19118 now covers
- being able to change what plugins what handle what mime types.
- adding something similar to the cookie manager that determines whether a page 
is allowed to load a plugin.

It seems to me like the first makes the most sense as global settings that few 
people ever tweak, and the second as per-site settings that most advanced users 
will look at.  Does it really make sense to combine them into one ui?  Would 
combining them force the mime type settings to be per-site?