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Written by Tech Notes

Published: 14 January 2015

While Using A Flash Blocker, Youtube Flash Videos Cannot Be Clicked On, And Flash Is Not Playing In General On Sites With Firefox; 2014 and 2015 CE.

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This article is really two articles in one.  One issue is the general blocking of flash done by Firefox, and the other problem is Youtubes blocking of clicking a flash to play it.

If you suddenly found that you cannot click on flash video (such as Youtube videos) and cannot see them or get them to work in Firefox, and this is especially true if you got the Flash Blocker, then know it is not something wrong that you have done.

Flash has given the notice of "Flash Player Plugin between 11.0 and 11.7.700.169 (click-to-play) has been blocked for your protection".  Arrrhg!  Personally, I would have preferred to have the choice to be protected or not, and yet when considering the overall population, I understand their position.  For a while we were given that choice.

What was done to cause the problem?

The flash add-on or plugin has been automatically disabled and no longer usable with your Internet browser.

Why was this done?

The old version of the flash had become considered as vulnerable in a way to be a security threat, and it seems a decision was made to disable the click-to-play ability.  Hemmm.  You are able to check if you got an vulnerable version here.

Part of the reason the flash no longer works is that Firefox has put the plug-in on a block list, which you can read more about here.  You can see the list of blocked firefox Add-ons here.  In addition to the blocked or disabled flash versions range mentioned in the above message, and according to the "blocked firefox Add-ons" list, these Flash player plugin version ranges are also blocked on these dates:

December 12, 2014: Flash Player Plugin 14.0 to 15.0.0.242 (click-to-play)
December 11, 2014: Flash Player Plugin on Linux 11.2.202.424 and lower (click-to-play)
December 11, 2014: Flash Player Plugin 10.3.183.66 to 13.0.0.258 (click-to-play)

If you have the Flash Blocker plugin (great plugin/add-on), then you initially saw something like this:

Fortunately, before, it was possible to bypass the block by clicking on the X on the top right corner of that window, and then clicking on the blank flash and the browser would give a message near the top that asked if you wanted to allow the flash to play on that site and if you wanted this choice remembered.  After choosing Allow, your flashes would play on that site for your session there.  Only the ones based on that domain name; I believe.  Unfortunately, not even that seems to be available now.

How to fix the problem?

Go to the plugin checking page here, and it should detect your old version and offer you to update it.  Once you go to the page, and scroll down, then you should see something like this:

Here is a list of the download versions indicated after you click on that Update Now button, which does NOT start an update process and just takes you to another long page of reading.  The list below shows the related vulnerable versions of Flash and the recommended version to update to, and what Internet Browser the recommendation is for.

Result Of Update Install For Firefox

I updated a Flash 11.7.700.224 to a Flash 16, and it did NOT fix my problem of not being able to click the flash while blocking flashes.  Yes, the above fixes the general blocking that is done by Firefox.  It may be that a big part of the reason Adobe is doing these updates is to stop the wide spread blocking of flash.  If you cannot selectively play flashes you want on a website page while blocking the rest and you are forced to unblock all on that page or not see any flashes, then many will have no choice but to white-list (this is done by going to Firefox Tools >> Add-ons >> Extensions >> Options of that extension) websites and thus the flash ads will start pouring through again.   GRRR!

Update:
Upon further tests, it seems that I am only not able to selectively click on flashes on Youtube.  So, as far as I can tell, this is something unwanted (many would call ####) being done by Google's Youtube.  I being an Adsense client of Google, I am forced to censor myself regarding Google products and services and avoid negative comments.  What Youtube is doing basically prevents us from being able to block flash ads on their site while still watching the videos there.  As of January 14, 2015, I am no longer able to use the flash blocker and selectively click on a video or flash to get it to play.  I am forced to give the site an exception to allow flashes to be shown, which causes all flash videos, slides, images to show, and this includes ads that are made of flash.  So, again, as far as I can tell so far, this is being done by Youtube, since I am able to selectively click on other site's flashes videos and ads.

Obviously both Adobe and Google (Youtube) have huge incentives to either prevent, or discourage, and preferably eliminate the blocking of flash ads.

EXTRA UPDATE:

FIX For Not Being Able To Click YOUTUBE Video Along With Flashblock.

I figured out a fix, or work around, using the built-in whitelist feature of Flashblock, and this article explains it.  Thank goodness. :-)

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