I don't understand what this has to do with your version of Firefox, especially considering the very minor differences between the ESR updates. Is it a limitation of IDM or something else??

Does the site where you want to download have a "fallback" feature that switches from the HTML5 player to Flash if HTML5 is not available? In that case, you can disable the HTML5 player from playing MP4 media (you probably do not need to disable playing other kinds of media) and not worry about your version of Firefox.

Or did you already try that before?

thanks for the effort but it seems you have more questions than I do !! And yes, I tried many things and Googled muchly! so let me help back.

1. The site is youtube. As soon as you hit ESR 45.6 it says your browser doesn't support flash video. You get no choice to revert 2. html5 video has fewer resolutions, and more CPU usage. 3. IDM [internet download manager] is awesome with multiple threading, etc. It seems to only recognize flash videos; maybe they can find a way around in some update. IIDM lets you save a queue so you can download later, instead of FF trying to download them all simultaneously. IDM superimposes a little window to select resolution, and then download. This is suppressed in 45.6 4. i installed youtube addon flash player which has switch to go from html5 to flash...but it don't always work. Works fine in 45.1 5. I uninstalled 45.6, re-installed 45.1, and it picked up all my extensions! Yay! Now the IDM download window appears over the flash videos again. see image

I am guessing that what might have set off the auto updating again was that I installed another profile for testing how FF slow startup. I failed to set it to NOT update. Even after Idid, FF kept updating to 45.3 and then to 45.6

philalethes said

1. The site is youtube. As soon as you hit ESR 45.6 it says your browser doesn't support flash video. You get no choice to revert

I've never heard to that in either ESR or in Firefox 50. Possibly some combination of settings/extensions isn't quite right.

Jscher2K--- look palso budso ! ;), I came here trying to solve a puzzle. I found a work around. I shared the facts as they were. The fact that YOU

1. never heard of that [so far in your long life here on Earth]; and 2. "possibly" some extension is "not quite right"

does NOT help, does & not add to the conversation, unless you and I are just here hangin' out. Unless you know ALL and EVERYTHING, then who cares if YOU have not heard of it? You have heard of it NOW.

I went to https://www.youtube.com/html5 when I had 45.6. Some Google answers said there was an option check box to use flash instead of html5. But now there is no such button. I installed YouTube Flash Video Player which lets you switch back and forth, but it didn't work under 45.6. OK?

I got it to work, and my IDM to work again by reverting to earlier version.

My main complaint is that FF updated even though I set it not to. I would like FF to take my settings seriously and to stop trying to "protect" me against my will !!!

We all know the stock guess answers: check for malware, reformat your drive, reinstall FF or Windoze, maybe some hardware is failing, maybe, maybe, maybe....ad infinitum.

Thanks for the try and giving of your time.

philalethes said

I went to https://www.youtube.com/html5 when I had 45.6. Some Google answers said there was an option check box to use flash instead of html5. But now there is no such button. I installed YouTube Flash Video Player which lets you switch back and forth, but it didn't work under 45.6. OK?

Google has not given an option to opt out of the HTML5 player for a long time. If your current YouTube flash forcing extension doesn't work, you can try the other very similarly named one:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-player/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/youtube-flash-video-player/