Closed Bug 942461 Opened 11 years ago Closed 11 years ago

add pref to disable plugins click-to-play notification bar and/or reduce its use

Categories

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect, P4)

Product:
Core Graveyard
Component:
Plug-ins
Version:
26 Branch
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: davemgarrett, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [mentor=gfritzsche][lang=js][good next bug])

Every time I go to a website now I get a notification bar shifting down the entire page content area just to tell me that Flash is blocked. Please add some way to disable this via at least an about:config pref. I've already got click-to-play in-content and a door-hanger widget. I don't need a third notification method. Bonus points for adding a "Don't show this again" checkbox to the bar itself and/or also disable this notification on user-selected plugin blocks rather than default ones. (if Java is blocked because it's the new default, ok, but if I made a point to shut Flash up I don't need it to tell me EVERY single time) (I'm personally on Aurora which this was just backported to recently; beta and trunk are also affected)
Clicking the "Continue Blocking" button will dismiss the notification permanently per-website. I'd take a patch for an about:config pref (no UI) to disable the infobar completely, but I'm not going to write it.
It should be rather easy to add support for the pref by not showing the notification bar here: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/annotate/74ab61b8d0f0/browser/base/content/browser-plugins.js#l1045
Priority: -- → P4
Whiteboard: [mentor=gfritzsche][lang=js][good next bug]
As per my comment in 932854 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=932854#c44), it seems there is no way to say "by default, I don't want to see any plugins or notifications about plugins; let me decide when I want to use plugins on my own, and don't make me interact with the notification bar on every website with plugins". While an about:config pref would solve my immediate concern, I'm not convinced "nag-by-default" is the best option. Perhaps an option to "Never notify me about blocked plugins" on the CtP doorhanger or simliar?
(In reply to David Barker from comment #3) > it seems there is > no way to say "by default, I don't want to see any plugins or notifications > about plugins; let me decide when I want to use plugins on my own, and don't > make me interact with the notification bar on every website with plugins". That is correct. > While an about:config pref would solve my immediate concern, I'm not > convinced "nag-by-default" is the best option. Perhaps an option to "Never > notify me about blocked plugins" on the CtP doorhanger or simliar? At this point, the CtP UI isn't tuned for Flash, on purpose: Flash is ubiquitous, and most users wouldn't understand. So I expect that if you want to make Flash CtP, you may want one of the additional addons such as flashblock/adblock which make it possible for power-users to control its behavior. We don't want to put a "never notify" checkbox in the infobar because it's likely that users who don't understand exactly what a plugin is might make a choice by accident and then not know how to enable plugins on the sites they do care about.
(In reply to Benjamin Smedberg [:bsmedberg] from comment #4) > So I expect that if you want > to make Flash CtP, you may want one of the additional addons such as > flashblock/adblock which make it possible for power-users to control its > behavior. It may be true that users will want to use an addon here, but the addon will need a way to disable this notification bar if it doesn't wish to re-implement everything from scratch. I've been using this nice and simple one for months, for example: https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/click-to-play-per-element/ It does exactly what I want: CtP per element without complexity. (I already use AdBlock Plus but want CtP for YouTube and the like, though fortunately, h.264 has recently become an option) It doesn't even have any options and doesn't need them. For users like me who don't want to have to go crawling back to Flashblock, just having an about:config pref for us or our addons to set to disable this notification would be the simplest route. > We don't want to put a "never notify" checkbox in the infobar because it's > likely that users who don't understand exactly what a plugin is might make a > choice by accident and then not know how to enable plugins on the sites they > do care about. That's a point that I have to concede.
>While an about:config pref would solve my immediate concern, I'm not convinced "nag-by-default" is the best option. Listen to this man. Without seperate handling of Flash, every other website you visit will pop up this nag bar. Which is turning out to be a worse experience than browsing with Flash enabled, and that's saying something.
people who use about:config all can understant what they are doing ,it is non of mozilla's bussiness and right to make a choose for users! Mozilla,you have not concerned users feelings for a long time!especially in CTP design,also in Bug 470699 ! These details makes more and more users and developers change to google chrome !
Actually, it was easy to write an addon to do this, so I'm going to WONTFIX the hidden pref. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-plugin-notifications/
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 11 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Thanks for your work, :bsmedberg. I do appreciate it, but I stand by my statement that work-arounds (such as extensions) aren't necessarily the best solutions. It feels distinctly like the decision to break per-element CtP in favour of "not confusing users". Favouring addons rather than prefs (hidden or otherwise) takes away from the configurability we've all grown to love in Firefox. For many, the ability to configure the browser exactly as we like (without addons or hacks) is what draws us from Chrome/Chromium and it's one-size-fits-all, no-prefs, lowest-common-denominator approach. Like I say, I really do appreciate the work you do on the product and completely understand that open source work can be thankless and prone to armchair-developer criticism; I also get that bugzilla isn't the best forum for extended discussion. However, I also really care about Firefox and fear that more advanced users such as myself are being marginalised in favour of the lowest common denominator. Surely there is room in the core product for both user segments?
Hi, I am interested in working on this bug. So please can you assign this to me? Regards, Anup
Assignee: nobody → allamsetty.anup
Actually, we closed this bug already as there is an addon - see comment 8.
Assignee: allamsetty.anup → nobody
Please reopen. The addon suggested in comment 8 does not work with Firefox 40 any more.
I was looking for something like this, and was sad to see bsmedberg's extension no longer worked. I've patched it up and it should now work with FF 38 and up. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-plugin-bar/ Hope this is useful to the 7 other people who voted on this bug. Thanks for the original extension :bsmedberg!
Nevertheless please reopen. An addon is no "solution" because it can easily break in a future release. Especially with this new WebExtensions the current addon is predestinated to break in a few month.
Please reopen this. Should not require an addon for something that should be a single configuration toggle.
I think devs should also remove the option to hide popup notifications to be more coherent. Someone will make an addon to re-hide it later.
Yes, this should be reopened. I prefer to use Mozilla but if the bar keeps showing I'll have to switch to other browser.
Where is your god now?
Product: Core → Core Graveyard
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