hello sgcpenny, this is caused by the flashblock extension, that you have installed. you can refer to this article on how to disable it: Disable or remove Add-ons

Phillipp thanks for this, it did fix it. However it does not explain why it *did* work and then stopped working. As I understand it, flashblock fixes a problem that flashplayer sucks ram. So now i am back to having flashplayer suck ram. For my work, I often have to tens of video links in a firefox window. So is the flash;layer ram suck a real problem? Is flashblock badly made, and is there an update, or a different fix? thanks so much SP

firefox is getting a similar feature that is built-into the browser.

in order to use it right now, you can enter about:config into the firefox address 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.
then you can go to tools > addons > plugins and set flash or other plugins to "always ask". afterwards you will be notified in the address bar or in the content area like with the flashblock-extension when there's plugin content on a page & you can activate it with one click...

> then you can go to tools > addons > plugins and set flash or other plugins to "always ask".

OK, I set Flashplayer to ask. What is your advice about doing the same for silverlight, java, flip4mac, etc? are they ram sicks or otherwise reduce performance enough to manually activate? thx SP

Hi sgcpenny, Flash is far and away the most widely used plugin. I think it's unlikely the others will be running on sites where you don't actually want them to run. It doesn't hurt to try the setting and see whether it works for you.