This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

After many years I am done with Firefox. After being driven crazy for over a week with this stupid BLOCKING of Flash player on every other website I go to?

more options

After many years I am about done with Firefox. After being driven crazy for over a week with this stupid BLOCKING of Flash player on every other website I go to, every window, every search, media playing, features to access on website, you name it. It is impossible to use the internet without Flash, all the websites use it. Your war with them is going to lose you a lot of customers. The downfall of Internet explorer years ago is why I left them and came to you. Now the same thing is happening with your personal war with adobe. Give people the option to enable it, DO NOT FORCE people to have to click a window every other page to enable, enable and allow, remember, what nonsense! I have to use the internet so I have to use flash. Until all websites remove it as an instrument to use their content, we're stuck with it. Let users enable and remember it permanent at their own risk. You warned us, we'll take our own chances. Put up a whole page warning and make me agree to the risk, I'll agree to it and click yes. No need to try to agitate and force people to deal with this issue 50 times a day when they are browsing or accessing content. I'm about to go over to Chrome for good, they don't force me to do this. I can have some serenity as I use the internet.

After many years I am about done with Firefox. After being driven crazy for over a week with this stupid BLOCKING of Flash player on every other website I go to, every window, every search, media playing, features to access on website, you name it. It is impossible to use the internet without Flash, all the websites use it. Your war with them is going to lose you a lot of customers. The downfall of Internet explorer years ago is why I left them and came to you. Now the same thing is happening with your personal war with adobe. Give people the option to enable it, DO NOT FORCE people to have to click a window every other page to enable, enable and allow, remember, what nonsense! I have to use the internet so I have to use flash. Until all websites remove it as an instrument to use their content, we're stuck with it. Let users enable and remember it permanent at their own risk. You warned us, we'll take our own chances. Put up a whole page warning and make me agree to the risk, I'll agree to it and click yes. No need to try to agitate and force people to deal with this issue 50 times a day when they are browsing or accessing content. I'm about to go over to Chrome for good, they don't force me to do this. I can have some serenity as I use the internet.

All Replies (2)

more options

Or you could use the current versions not being soft blocked due to critical vulnerabilities.

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

Mozilla did not soft block any Flash versions before December 2014 since Feb/Mar 2013 as the versions then did not have serious security issues at time. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/

Modified by James

more options

Sorry to hear you have been frustrated for an entire week. An update to resolve this issue was released by Adobe eight days ago! You can get version 18.0.0.209 on this page:

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html

In the first table, look for the row for "plugin-based browsers" and you can use either the EXE or the MSI installer.

To ensure that the old version is removed, please close any tabs that are using Flash, or exit out of Firefox, during the update.

After the update, please type or paste about:plugins in the address bar and press Enter. You can use Find (ctrl+f) to search for npswf and make sure old versions are no longer listed. If you find an older version, Firefox will show the path to it on disk so you can remove it.


Anyway, Mozilla is not "at war" with Adobe, and everyone knows Flash is going to be with us for a while. Mozilla had "soft-blocked" version 18.0.0.203 and earlier. What is that? Instead of letting all sites use Flash automatically, which was the default setting, Flash was temporarily switched to requiring sites to have express permission to use Flash, to help protect against "drive by" attacks.

If you are not accustomed to using the "Ask to Activate" feature with any of your plugins, here's how it works:

When you visit a site that wants to use Flash, you should see a notification icon in the address bar and usually (but not always) one of the following: a link in a black rectangle in the page or an infobar sliding down between the toolbar area and the page.

The plugin notification icon in the address bar typically looks like a small, dark gray Lego block. When the page wants to use a soft-blocked plugin, the icon turns red to alert you to the concern.

If you see a good reason to use Flash, and the site looks trustworthy, you can go ahead and click the notification icon in the address bar to allow Flash. You can trust the site for the time being or permanently.

But some pages use Flash only for tracking you or playing ads, so if you don't see an immediate need for Flash, feel free to ignore the notification! It will just sit there in case you want to use it later.