“Click-To-Play” means that for any Flash content that appears, instead of just automatically playing the content you will see a puzzle piece icon or a play icon where you have to click that to start the Flash. For many, this is exactly how like they Flash to operate.

Chrome and Opera both have Click-To-Play built in (in Opera 12 it’s a checkbox called “Enable plug-ins only on demand”),and Firefox has the FlashBlock add-on.

But what about IE9? Does it have any way to have similar functionality?

Sort of. You’ll understand what I mean by that in a moment.

First I’ll explain how it’s done.

Step 1. Gear icon / Manage Add-Ons

Step 2. Click Toolbars and Extensions. (It may be already selected, but click it anyway.)

Step 3. From the drop-down menu under Show, select Run without permission

After you do this there will be a momentary pause; this is normal.

Step 4. Single-right-click Shockwave Flash Object, and then select More information from the context menu

Step 5. From the window that appears, click the Remove all sites button

When you do this, the little asterisk in the large white field will disappear. If you click Allow on all sites, it changes it back to the way it was. For now, leave the big white field blank.

This is what happens afterward

For any web site you go to (if not every web site you go to given how much Flash is used on the internet), you’re going to see this notice at the bottom of the browser:

You only have two options. Allow or Allow for all web sites if you click the little down arrow next to the button. If you choose Allow, Flash will always be allowed just for the site you’re on. If you choose Allow for all web sites, IE will revert to treating Flash exactly as it did before and allow Flash everywhere on any web site.

The ‘sort of’ part I mention above is that there is no option for Allow once. If there were, then this would be a perfect solution. But unfortunately all you have available is basically all-or-nothing mode.

When you do click Allow, if you repeat the above steps and get to the window where the big white field was, you would see something like this:

Over time, this list will fill up with all the sites you allow Flash content to run on.

Is it even worth it to bother with any of this for IE?

That depends on your point of view. For some of you, you’re now very happy that you can do something to get better control over Flash content in IE9 – and in addition you can TURN IT OFF if you want. For the rest of you, this may seem to be way too much effort given the easier Flash blocking/pausing options in other browsers. But you have to admit, it’s better than nothing.

Or maybe you’re the type that’s two steps away from quitting the internet altogether and taking up knitting instead.

In any case, you now know how to get better control over your Flash in IE9 and “sort of” get click-to-play functionality out of it.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below: