How in the Tech

Silencing the “Install Missing Plugins” message in Firefox

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 7, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Annoyances, Firefox

Another day, another Adobe Flash exploit – except this time there is no fix available yet from Adobe. Comforting isn’t it? I’ve had enough, the reality is I’m giving up on Flash and have removed the install from my system. In the past few months there appears to have been just as many Flash security updates as there were Windows updates. Are the days of Flash’s dominance on the web over with? Apple seems to think just that – none of their mobile devices support Flash, though the rationale has probably less to do with security concerns. The next web mark-up standard, HTML5, will becoming to all the major browsers quite soon and will introduce a lot of the functionality web developers rely on Flash to accomplish today.

After uninstalling the Adobe Flash plugin one of the first things to jump out at you is Firefox’s gentle reminder that Additional plugins are required to display all the media on this page. The popup appears at the top of the offending web page and while you can click it away, it returns on every valid circumstance. You’d be surprised how much Flash is utilized where you aren’t expecting it!

What are your options at this point? Short of clicking out of the message every time and just living with the annoyance because at least you know you are browsing safer than many other users, your options are pretty limited. So to that, I’ll give you the best option – disable Firefox’s warning message altogether!

In the address bar enter about:config

Use the Filter box for locate the key plugin.default_plugin_disabled

Double-click on the line to toggle the setting from true to false

The warning message should now be suppressed. However, it is important to realize that this affects every plugin warning message – not just Flash. Truthfully, this isn’t a huge concern for most however.