youtube click_to_play
I hate getting pop-ups, videos and adverts in my face as well as eating up my monthly broadband quota as I surf the web looking for information, so in FireFox I had set about:config -> plugins.click_to_play = true
That was working fine until recently. Now I see youtube somehow started bypass this setting of mine and shove the video at me anyway in spite of the message that it needs a plugin!
I note youtube equally bypass the 'ActiveX Filtering' in Internet Explorer 10. IMO there is no point having these options and settings if unscrupulous site operators can bypass them.
I presume youtube are abusing HTML 5 capabilities to achieve this effect and so I want to know if we can still disable active content or are going to be completely at the mercy of every site we visit in the future. :(
Modified by perduta
Chosen solution
I seem to have fixed the problem as follows:
From the FireFox Help menu -> troubleshooting click in 'reset to default state' and I also uninstalled adobe flash player and reinstalled a fresh copy. Then I set up the preferences again.
I'm not sure what the problem was, but I noticed Flash player plugin keeps asking to be enabled on individual sites now and I suspect I may have clicked that at some stage and this allows it to make inconsistent exceptions that confuse the click-to-play settings.
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Did you enter the HTML5 test on YouTube?
You can also try to set the media.autoplay.enabled pref to falser on the about:config page.
Ah, no... I could have sworn I opted out ... but thanks for that link because something somehow appears to have opted me back in! :O It is a bit worrying if this is going to happen when their html 5 goes live, but opting out again seems to have fixed the problem for the time being. Just to be on the safe side I also switched off media.autoplay.enabled as you suggested :)
edit: update see below.
Modified by perduta
... however opting out again is only a partial solution: I restarted ForeFox then SOME youtubes are click to play but others play anyway! For instance: watch?v=c5NL76BXauY is blocked until I click but watch?v=M4vqr3_ROIk is NOT and forces itself onto the screen even though it says a plug in is needed?!
You can add &html5=1 or &html5=0 to a video link to try to force a specific version.
Thanks, I did try that but it makes no difference: The video plays regardless. Maybe it has nothing to do with html5. Internet explorer can't block it either. It is a problem when our monthly data plan is squandered on video we don't want to watch :(
I tried that latest version of the addon/stop-youtube-autoplay but it doesn't seem to make any difference at all... Even stranger when I went back to about:config and disabled plugins.click_to_play and enabled media.autoplay it also makes no difference. It still says I need a plug in but continues to play anyway on some videos.
Chosen Solution
I seem to have fixed the problem as follows:
From the FireFox Help menu -> troubleshooting click in 'reset to default state' and I also uninstalled adobe flash player and reinstalled a fresh copy. Then I set up the preferences again.
I'm not sure what the problem was, but I noticed Flash player plugin keeps asking to be enabled on individual sites now and I suspect I may have clicked that at some stage and this allows it to make inconsistent exceptions that confuse the click-to-play settings.