some plugins have been deactivated

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canalrun
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Joined: October 9th, 2010, 10:45 am

some plugins have been deactivated

Post by canalrun »

Some plug-ins have been deactivated for your safety
Adobe Flash

What is this nonsense?
How do I tell it to enable it everywhere instead of having to enable it for each webpage.

No, I don't want to upgrade Adobe Flash. The upgrade breaks Dragon Naturally Speaking. It took me a long time to uninstall the latest version of Flash and revert back to an older version that worked.

Barry.
dreadnaut
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by dreadnaut »

There is a preference related to this in about:config: extensions.blocklist.enabled = true/false.
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DanRaisch
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by DanRaisch »

Bad advice. Blocking the blocklist allows malware extensions to install, etc. What you need to do is contact Dragon to ask when they will update their software to work with the current, more secure versions of the plug-ins they require.
canalrun
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by canalrun »

Thanks.

I have gone with the about:config: extensions.blocklist.enabled = true/false solution.

What really needs to happen is Adobe needs to update their Flash software so that it does not break third-party applications.

Nuance is reluctant to fix Dragon Naturally Speaking. They want you to upgrade to their latest version, 12, which supposedly solves the problem, but this has received terrible reviews.

I wonder if Firefox is responsible for the flashing Windows 7 security shields on my taskbar. I constantly get these flashing security shields. Usually as I'm opening Firefox. Sometimes I have 5 or 10 flashing security shields lined up. The security shields ask "Do you want to upgrade Adobe flash player?". Sometimes my computer will "Gray", all activity is interrupted, and I will be forced to click "No" to a dialogue that pops up asking if I want to install a flash player upgrade. Adobe claims it is not responsible for this.

This "holier than thou", "we know best" attitude from software vendors is a royal pita.

Barry.
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manto
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by manto »

canalrun wrote:What really needs to happen is Adobe needs to update their Flash software so that it does not break third-party applications.

Nuance is reluctant to fix Dragon Naturally Speaking. They want you to upgrade to their latest version, 12, which supposedly solves the problem, but this has received terrible reviews.

We can't expect Adobe to accommodate every third-party program out there. The third-party program developers need to design around Flash, not the other way around. I would go ahead and upgrade to the latest Dragon Naturally Speaking. After all, there's a reason a new version has been released, right? Sticking with an older version will likely not be useful in the long run - if there is already a problem running it today, there will probably be more problems down the road.
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malliz
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by malliz »

canalrun wrote:Sometimes I have 5 or 10 flashing security shields lined up. The security shields ask "Do you want to upgrade Adobe flash player?". Sometimes my computer will "Gray", all activity is interrupted, and I will be forced to click "No" to a dialogue that pops up asking if I want to install a flash player upgrade. Adobe claims it is not responsible for this.
.

Do you have Avast AV? the recent upgrade added the Software Updater feature. You can turn it off in the Avast settings
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Anonymosity
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by Anonymosity »

What does that have to do with plugins? If plugins are being deactivated, what would do that?
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malliz
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by malliz »

Anonymosity wrote:What does that have to do with plugins? If plugins are being deactivated, what would do that?

Don't be thick you know very well that plugins can be placed on the internal black list and deactivated if Mozilla find a significant security problem with them
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Frank Lion
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by Frank Lion »

canalrun wrote:Thanks.

I have gone with the about:config: extensions.blocklist.enabled = true/false solution..

Not the greatest idea.

I use Flash 10.3 and you only get plugin checking if plugin.scan.plid.all is set to true. You just make a folder called plugins in your profile and copy only the plugins you want into that. Job done.

There's bound to be full details of all this around somewhere, maybe I wrote it all out, can't remember. Anyway, that's how it's done properly.

canalrun wrote:I wonder if Firefox is responsible for the flashing Windows 7 security shields on my taskbar.

You wonder wrong.
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James
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by James »

malliz wrote:
Anonymosity wrote:What does that have to do with plugins? If plugins are being deactivated, what would do that?

Don't be thick you know very well that plugins can be placed on the internal black list and deactivated if Mozilla find a significant security problem with them

Just about every Plugin version blocklisted (along with Extensions) are mentioned in https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/
dreadnaut
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by dreadnaut »

DanRaisch wrote:Bad advice. Blocking the blocklist allows malware extensions to install, etc. What you need to do is contact Dragon to ask when they will update their software to work with the current, more secure versions of the plug-ins they require.


Actually, the best thing would be if Firefox allowed us to choose which versions to run, instead of adding yet another it's-for-your-own-good! feature. It can be considered bad advice, but is the only way I found to reverse the annoying behaviour, and there are other ways to be safe —flashblock, using the browser on specific websites only, etc.

Frank Lion wrote:I use Flash 10.3 and you only get plugin checking if plugin.scan.plid.all is set to true. You just make a folder called plugins in your profile and copy only the plugins you want into that. Job done.


Actually, Plugin scanning has nothing to do with enabling older versions of plugins to run. Disabling the preference you mention will disable all plugins stored in specific directories.
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Frank Lion
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by Frank Lion »

dreadnaut wrote:
Frank Lion wrote:I use Flash 10.3 and you only get plugin checking if plugin.scan.plid.all is set to true. You just make a folder called plugins in your profile and copy only the plugins you want into that. Job done.


Actually, Plugin scanning has nothing to do with enabling older versions of plugins to run. Disabling the preference you mention will disable all plugins stored in specific directories.

Actually, disabling plugin.scan.plid.all has everything to do with enabling older versions of plugins to run.

Three questions - who do you think is amongst those writing the damn KB articles around here and, secondly, how come the method I describe is exactly how I enable older plugin versions to run without warnings or deactivation, actually?


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Finally, who is the total moron around here advising users to disable their Firefox blocklists and exposing them to malware installs by this lot? - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/
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dreadnaut
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by dreadnaut »

Frank Lion wrote:Three questions - who do you think is amongst those writing the damn KB articles around here and, secondly, how come the method I describe is exactly how I enable older plugin versions to run without warnings or deactivation, actually?


Uhm, not you, looking at the history of the page in question. Unless you are talking about another page that you have not linked.

However, re-reading your post, I now get the workaround that you tried to explain. There are two separate points: one can use the preference plugin.scan.plid.all to disable loading of all plugins specified in registry (which means most plugins); at the same time, it seems that Firefox will run any plugins it finds in a folder named plugins/ in the current profile, regardless of version.

There are a number of issue here: it's not clear which files to copy, following which directory structure; it seems like you need to copy all the plugins you want to run, and that might be quite difficult if one uses many plugins; installing new plugins will require far more work.

You make it sound very simple when it's not, and make that an excuse to be rude and condescending.

Disabling extension and plugin checks it's far from the optimal solution, but the alternatives are just as problematic. Which usually means that something should be improved in the software, not that people should flame on forums.
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Frank Lion
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Re: some plugins have been deactivated

Post by Frank Lion »

Frank Lion wrote:Finally, who is the total moron around here advising users to disable their Firefox blocklists and exposing them to malware installs by this lot? - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/blocked/
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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