FireFox Plugins query

ih8stress

Just done a fresh reinstall on my pc (see other thread) and installed Firefox.

It has come up with some Plugins that I do not have a clue about! And yes, I have tried Google first.

Can someone PLEASE tell me if I can just set them to either 'always activate', 'never activate' or 'ask to activate'. And which options for each one.

Do I need to try and remove any of them? It seems that removing OpenH264 Video Codec isn't easy for example.

OpenH264 Video Codec
Primetime Content Decryption Module
Widevine Content Decryption Module
Adobe Acrobat
Silverlight plug-in
Windows Live Photo Gallery

Hope someone can help me, please - I'm definitely feeling my username with it all ................................

jshm2

They are standard to set "always activate"

The Adobe Acrobat plugin allows you to read PDF's online without haveing to download them. Similarly the codec lets you play MPEGs without downloading them first.

ih8stress

Are there any I can safely set to 'never activate' or 'ask first' if I don't do these things online?

debitcardmayhem

you can set them all to ask, do you use noscript in firefox too?
If you use foxit reader, or something else rather than acrobat (I do but that's me) then set acrobat to never activate , but then you have to download the pdf using save as. I am not on windows at the moment but will check later

bsod

Set them all to never, if you notice any problems, set them to ask.

The more plugins activated, the higher the risk, and the more time wasted patching

esuhl

debitcardmayhem wrote: »

If you use foxit reader, or something else rather than acrobat (I do but that's me) then set acrobat to never activate , but then you have to download the pdf using save as. I am not on windows at the moment but will check later

You don't need Acrobat or Foxit Reader any more. Firefox has a PDF-viewer built-in these days.

ih8stress wrote: »

OpenH264 Video Codec

This is an open-source video codec that is built-in to Firefox.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenH264

ih8stress wrote: »

Primetime Content Decryption Module
Widevine Content Decryption Module

These are proprietary DRM decryption components for Adobe Primetime and Google Widevine.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm

ih8stress wrote: »

Adobe Acrobat
Silverlight plug-in
Windows Live Photo Gallery

These are plugins to allow the programs to interact with the browser.

You don't need Adobe Acrobat any more, as PDF support is available in Firefox. Silverlight is a bit of a security vulnerability, so I'd uninstall that (via the list of installed programs) unless you really need it. I guess the Windows Live Photo Gallery is probably some component that helps you synchronise folders on your PC to ones in the cloud, or simplifies photo uploads/downloads.

If you want to completely remove a plug-in, look first for a relevant program you can uninstall via the Control Panel. If an uninstallation option is not available you can locate and delete the plug-in files manually as described here:

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/how-delete-extensions-plug-ins-from-firefox-3427203/

A list of all the plug-ins that are currently installed in Firefox can be found right next to the Extensions-section, under Firefox > Add-ons > Plug-ins. And in keeping with tradition, plug-ins normally can't be deleted from the Browser-UI either. Be sure to check the control panel of Windows first to find out whether or not they can simply be uninstalled there, before bothering with the manual removal. If not, open a new tab in Firefox and enter "about:config" to bring up a list of configuration entries for Firefox. Type "plugin.expose_full_path" into the search field and click on the corresponding entry in the list to change its boolean value from "false" to "true".

By doing so, Firefox is allowed to display the complete installation path of all its plug-ins in the configuration-window. To open the latter, simply type "about:plugins" into the browser address bar and hit enter. You should now be able to see all installed plug-ins and their according file paths neatly summed up in a compact list. To remove a particular plug-in from Firefox, simply track its installation path and delete or rename the DLL-file.