Actual Click to Play is still experimental and shouldn't be enabled. The only thing that is enabled is click to play blocking of out of date plugins.

Tylerdowner...thanks for the feedback...but I guess I'm confused. Isn't this the plug-in that's now automatically included with FireFox since the Java vulnerabilities that were found last month? If so, my understanding was that it would block ALL plugins regardless. Or did I misunderstand that?

Also, just to test your answer, on my computer (where it's been working), I just now updated to the latest FF (18.0.2), Java (7u13) & Flash (11.5.502.149) & it still blocks as expected. So I'm not convinced that the plugins being out of date is the cause.

Your thoughts? Thanks again! :)

Firefox does not block all plugins automatically by default right now. It blocks Java 7 update 11 and lower, Flash 10.2 and lower and non-current versions of Reader. Other than that, nothing is being blocked.

If you've configured your computers to block everything, it may work, but there is a chance it might not due to unknown bugs, which is why we haven't turned it on by default yet.

Where would I go to configure this? I don't believe I made any modifications since it appeared to work right off the bat when we installed it on every Windows 7 computer in this office.

Also, not to be argumentative...but just to make sure I'm understanding correctly...doesn't this article indicate that FF did turn it on by default?

Also, it just doesn't make sense why, for instance, Java is still being blocked when I have a version newer than 7u11 installed...or Flash being blocked with version 11.5 installed.

Only for specific plugins in specific situations. The default for the plugins.click_to_play pref is still false in current Firefox releases and there are still a lot of bugs open.

• https://wiki.mozilla.org/Opt-in_activation_for_plugins

• Bug 738698 - [meta] Users should have the ability to activate plugins on demand

(please do not comment in bug reports: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)

Is there a better plugin that can stop plugins from running without the user's ok that y'all would recommend since it sounds like Click-to-Play shouldn't be relied on?

Click to play works if it is done intentionally via blocklisting because of security issues.
In such a case you can easily click the icon on the location bar to activate the plugin.
CTP may not work properly for all plugins and that is why it is not recommended to switch it on for all plugins by setting the pref to true.
If you do not want a plugin to run then disable that plugin on the about:addons page (you can consider to pin the about:addons page).

Is it still the case that click-to-play has not been enabled in default FF installs for all plugins except the latest version of Flash (as taken from Mozilla's original blog post)?

I've had the pref set to always use click-to-play for some time, but got tired of my site exceptions getting wiped out every time a new version of Firefox was released.

So I created a new profile and noticed that this option does not work at all by default. For instance, I went to Ikea's planning tool and installed their plugin, when I came back to their site, the plugin activated without asking me.

hello Oo0Bailey0oO, no it wasn't switched on per default yet, so you'd have to turn on click-to-play manually under about:config. in firefox 22 there will be a rewrite of the database that stores your custom plugin permissions - from there on onwards they shouldn't get wiped anymore when you update your browser or certain plugins.

Note that there may still be plugins that aren't working properly with click-to-play enabled, at least that used to be the case in the past and this was one of the reasons not to enable CTP.

Thanks! Good to know that will be fixed soon.

Thank you cor-el,

When you say that the setting doesn't always work properly, what is the behaviour? Plugins do not appear as click-to-play when they should, or plugins won't play when you click?

In addition to this setting, I run a few add-ons like Disconnect and Adblock Plus as well as managing cookie exceptions on a per site basis. Once in a while I have a site that will show properly in Safari but won't show it's content properly in FF, even if I turn all of those add-ons off, accept all cookies and "always allow" plugins. Perhaps this click-to-play caveat could explain that problem.

If it isn't working properly then the plugin won't start and you see empty space instead.

That definitely could explain it then. Thanks for letting me know.