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Unable to enable Adobe Flash permanently

  • 11 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 8 views
  • Last reply by McCoy

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With the latest version of Firefox (69.0) I am unable to choose 'Always Enable' for Adobe Flash Player. This is not helpful especially on my own website - www.cheadlehulmeweather.co.uk which I run.

The Adobe content is world city times and an image of the moon's phase. I visit my weather site each day and have to enable Flash every time. Why can't you allow the user to make the decision themselves how long they wish to enable Flash for? How about a list of sites it can be enabled permanently for? That way the user can make their own choice.

With the latest version of Firefox (69.0) I am unable to choose 'Always Enable' for Adobe Flash Player. This is not helpful especially on my own website - www.cheadlehulmeweather.co.uk which I run. The Adobe content is world city times and an image of the moon's phase. I visit my weather site each day and have to enable Flash every time. Why can't you allow the user to make the decision themselves how long they wish to enable Flash for? How about a list of sites it can be enabled permanently for? That way the user can make their own choice.

Chosen solution

Hello again Ray,

First of all : the people who answer questions here are (for the main part) volunteers, users just like you, who are trying to help other users in their spare time ....

If you want to install a Firefox ESR version (for now) :

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/68.0esr/releasenotes/

(you'll have to scroll all the way down to find the download button)

But I would just stick to enabling/allowing Flash for each session on a site that (still) uses Flash.

Adobe announced the "end-of-life" for Flash in 2020 back in 2017 already, so everybody had (and still has) ample time to switch to e.g. HTML5 .....

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (11)

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Hello Ray,

I totally understand your frustration ....

Would you please go over this thread :

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1268070

Maybe you could submit feedback (see my first post in that thread)

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Done. Thanks McCoy.

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You can consider to switch to Firefox 68 ESR to get full support for Flash a bit longer.

   https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forum-response-flash-end-life Forum Response
   https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Plugins/Roadmap
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Pulkit Krishna said

You can consider to switch to Firefox 68 ESR to get full support for Flash a bit longer. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forum-response-flash-end-life Forum Response https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Plugins/Roadmap

I’ve never heard of ESR. Can’t see a link in your reply. But why can’t you offer exceptions? This is all very heavy handed by Mozilla and I’m not impressed.

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Chosen Solution

Hello again Ray,

First of all : the people who answer questions here are (for the main part) volunteers, users just like you, who are trying to help other users in their spare time ....

If you want to install a Firefox ESR version (for now) :

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/68.0esr/releasenotes/

(you'll have to scroll all the way down to find the download button)

But I would just stick to enabling/allowing Flash for each session on a site that (still) uses Flash.

Adobe announced the "end-of-life" for Flash in 2020 back in 2017 already, so everybody had (and still has) ample time to switch to e.g. HTML5 .....

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Ray said

Why can't you allow the user to make the decision themselves how long they wish to enable Flash for?

I'm wondering that myself - I think disabling the option to set Shockwave Flash to "Always Activate" was premature; it could have waited till the end of 2020.

I'm trying to find out if it would be possible to create a boolean preference on the "about:config" page that will force-enable it, but I'm not keeping my hopes up .....

How about a list of sites it can be enabled permanently for? That way the user can make their own choice.

It would be impossible to create such list, as there are maybe hundreds of thousands (if not more) people who visit sites that still use Flash, and they will all visit different sites.

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Hi McCoy,

I appreciate your help and the fact that it's a self-help forum. I'm going to do as you suggest and keep enabling it each day. When Defender allows you to exclude folders from scanning that you know are safe you'd think Mozilla might do the same.

I wasn't asking for Firefox to create a global list of sites. Just a user option to allow always enabled for my weather site.

Ho hum, such is life.

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Ray said

I wasn't asking for Firefox to create a global list of sites. Just a user option to allow always enabled for my weather site.

Yes, as I was typing my reply I figured that's what you were talking about, but that would require maybe a preference on the "about:config" page, and I don't see that happening.

Ho hum, such is life.

But we'll keep on smiling, eh ? After all : having to click "Allow" a few times (or numerous times) a day is not so bad .....

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You're probably right. In any case Flash support is going completely in a year or so. Pity really as those features on my website were nice.

Worse things happen at sea! Thanks for your help and support.

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Hi Ray!

Per https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/69.0/releasenotes/

"As previously announced in the Plugin Roadmap for Firefox, the "Always Activate" option for Flash plugin content has been removed. Firefox will now always ask for user permission before activating Flash content on a website."

As this is expected behavior, please mark this question as solved.

Thanks!

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@ alex_mayorga :

See my first post .....