I have data limit, how do I stop embedded video from downloading when a page opens?
When viewing a web page with text I want to read and embedded video I don't want to watch, I see the video status bar loading even if I don't press "Play" or if I press "Pause". This is using up my data limit over my satellite internet connection. Pressing "esc" to stop loading the page doesn't seem to stop the video. I changed the application preferences for "Media files" to "always ask" and that seems to help with some. Now some embedded windows don't play at all. Is this the only solution? If so, are there other file types on that long applications list I should also change?
Helpful replies
hello, you could try to enable click-to-play functionality for plugins - then the plugin content won't be active until you enable it on each page.
enter about:config into the firefox location bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named plugins.click_to_play. double-click it and change its value to true.
Go to answer 2Additional System Details
Installed Plug-ins
- Shockwave Flash 11.5 r502
- Displays Java applet content, or a placeholder if Java is not installed.
- The QuickTime Plugin allows you to view a wide variety of multimedia content in web pages. For more information, visit the QuickTime Web site.
- The Flip4Mac WMV Plugin allows you to view Windows Media content using QuickTime.
- RealPlayer Plugin
- iPhoto6
Application
- User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0
More Information
Helpful Reply
hello, you could try to enable click-to-play functionality for plugins - then the plugin content won't be active until you enable it on each page.
enter about:config into the firefox location bar (confirm the info message in case it shows up) & search for the preference named plugins.click_to_play. double-click it and change its value to true.
Question owner
Thank you, madperson. I have made the change, and it certainly stops a lot of stuff from loading! It will take me a while to try this on different websites, with different media players embedded. One thing I noticed is there is no way to tell what is being prevented from displaying. A box just says "Click to activate the Flash plugin" and there's no way to tell if it's a video or a list of additional links I might want to follow. But it does give me more control and speeds loading.
You can also look at Adblock Plus to prevent loading specific content.
- Adblock Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
You need to subscribe to a Filter list (e.g. the EasyList).
- Flash Block: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/flashblock/