I see the article is about Firefox 17, so there is time to figure out how to adjust to your preference. Of course, you know that users can enable and disable plugins here:

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Add-ons > Plugins

Could you explain in more detail what (new) feature you want to block?

The click-to-play feature itself is disabled in Firefox 16, although it might be turned on in future versions. Users can toggle the preference (plugins.click_to_play) through the about:config preferences editor.

You can lock the plugins.click_to_play pref to false.

• lockPref("plugins.click_to_play", false);

You can use a mozilla.cfg file in the Firefox program folder to lock prefs or specify new (default) values.

Place a file local-settings.js in the defaults\pref folder where you also find the file channel-prefs.js to specify using mozilla.cfg.

pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg");
pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); // use this to disable the byte-shift

See:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locking_preferences

You can use these functions in mozilla.cfg:

defaultPref();  // set new default value
pref();         // set pref, but allow changes in current session
lockPref();     // lock pref, disallow changes

Thanks for your answers.

What I want to disable is the popup advising the user about out of date plugins. If we have click-to-play disabled this popup won't appear?

Thx

I am not certain which occurrence of such a popup you may be trying to block, but I thought I would add some general background information. You will be able to test out any new features in advance of your users seeing them.

• Test out other versions of Firefox by installing Firefox also from other channels
  Beta and Aurora: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/
  Nightly http://nightly.mozilla.org/
  • http://kb.mozillazine.org/Testing_pre-release_versions#Installing_multiple_versions
• In a corporate in environment you may wish to consider ESR
  http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/

I'm trying to block these popups: https://blog.mozilla.org/security/files/2012/10/ctp-in-action1-600x478.png

I'm currently in the beta channel, thx

This seems to be very helpful but a little confusing for a non-programmer... Is there any way to you could specify the location of directories and files to be altered more clearly, and make the instructions on the actions more "step-by-step". It would be greatly appreciated!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ You can lock the plugins.click_to_play pref to false.

   lockPref("plugins.click_to_play", false); 

You can use a mozilla.cfg file in the Firefox program folder to lock prefs or specify new (default) values.

Place a file local-settings.js in the defaults\pref folder where you also find the file channel-prefs.js to specify using mozilla.cfg.

pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg"); pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); // use this to disable the byte-shift

See:

   http://kb.mozillazine.org/Locking_preferences 

You can use these functions in mozilla.cfg:

defaultPref(); // set new default value pref(); // set pref, but allow changes in current session lockPref(); // lock pref, disallow changes" +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Hi, does anyone know a way of disabling this feature altogether so an out of date plugin is ignored and just runs? it's confusing our staff and student users who can't update their plugins anyway. I've set the plugins.click_to_play to false but users still have to click to play. i'm using FFoxESR17. flash is updated so regularly that i cant keep up with the updates and i want to buy some time.

You can try cor-el's suggestions in this thread - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/938771

My understanding is that click-to-play is still developing, but is almost finished.

I started running into this stupid (IMO) feature yesterday after updating to FF18. Now when I go to a site that is using Java I have to click your stupid warning junk to get it working. I have the latest version and update of Java installed (according to your plugin checking system built into the browser) but this still happens. So why not make an easy way to disable this pain in the butt feature to keep from annoying your users then? I am getting more and more fed up with "Big Brother" (that is you FF programmers, BTW in this case) arbitrarily deciding to annoy us users of this browser. I love a lot of the features of FF and have used it for years, but when stuff such as this starts annoying the crap out of me, it makes me want to look elsewhere. From what I gather, even the latest Java update has some vulnerability problems, but I accept that risk and don't want to keep being bothered by a stupid plugin checker arbitrarily blocking usage every stinking time I go to a site that uses Java in the same browsing session. If it happened just once during a browsing session it might be bearable, but the continuous having to click your blocker is a pain in the ass and is making me seriously consider looking at Chrome once again. And if Chrome has an add-in such as AdBlock Plus (my main reason for using FF), then you can count me as a former user of FF if stupidity such as this isn't rectified.

Hi theoldfox and thanks for your suggestion. i tried it and a few other options (everything i could think of) but the net result was that i couldn't switch it off or get around this feature. all i need is a way of switching this off so i'll wait until this option is developed.