Enabling users to control browser plugins, to free up memory and speed up browsing

Apr 13, 2012 12:30 GMT  ·  By

Firefox is on its way to getting a click-to-play feature for plugins, Flash in particular. A similar option is available in Chrome, though it's not enabled by default. The click-to-play option is now available in the latest Firefox Nightly releases, but has to be enabled first.

As you can expect, it's still highly experimental. Google spent more than a year before making the option available to all users by default, but even so it's not enabled by default.

For good reason too, it's a feature best left to more advanced users since it can break sites in non-obvious ways.

The feature works in Firefox pretty much as you'd expect, plugins are not loaded until users click on the Flash element to run it.

"A couple days ago I landed an initial implementation of “click-to-play plugins” in desktop Firefox,"  Mozilla's Jared Wein wrote.

The feature is disabled even in the Nightly builds, you have to navigate to about:config and set "plugins.clik_to_play" to "true."

"When plugins.click_to_play is enabled, plugins will require an extra click to activate and start 'playing' content. This is an incremental step towards securing our users, reducing memory usage, and opening up the web," he explained.

The basic functionality is there and the developer is now working on making the feature run on a per-site basis, enabling users to allow plugins on some sites but on not others.

There's good reason to have plugins blocked by default. For one, if you don't need them, they won't use up memory doing nothing. That's not much of a concern on most desktops, but every bit helps.

Beyond that, blocking plugins removes a big cause of instability, Flash banner ads or heavy Flash sites won't run until you enable them. It also makes it harder to exploit vulnerabilities that creep up in plugins perhaps more so than in any other piece of software.

If all goes smooth, Firefox 14 should be sporting the feature, but even so it will be a while before it's something that most Firefox users will be able to enjoy.