I think this was first introduced in version 15 or 16, and I've been using it almost ever since. It was an opt-in feature (had to be enabled manually in about:config [1]), and it wasn't without issue. It was bad enough that I temporarily disabled it for a while until the next time Firefox upgraded.
The problem was that you had to, as the article says, "click" to play content. This was fine on YouTube, Netflix, etc., since there was a very obvious visual cue about how to activate your content [2]. However, not all sites had such obvious cues. SoundCloud, for example, would just silently fail, and I would have to manually disable the feature to get it to play (in practice, I just loaded the URL in Chrome).
Since Firefox 18, this has been much better. Now, there is an area next to the address bar that you can use to enable content, even if there is nothing on the actual page that you can click [3]. When you click this area, a pop-up appears asking which plugins you would like to load, and if you would like to always allow plugins on that site.
This pop-up is hidden for the most part, and isn't trivially discoverable[4] - something Mozilla really needs to work on - but it does pop-up the very first time you encounter a page with blocked content (per Firefox session, it seems), so there is at least some notification that you can unblock content.
If they're planning on having this feature enabled by default, I really doubt it will be the end of the world for most people. They'll just click the notification, and play through.
[1] Set the value of `plugins.click_to_play` to `true`. If it doesn't exist, create a new Boolean value for it, setting the name/value as above.
> SoundCloud, for example, would just silently fail, and I would have to manually disable the feature to get it to play
SoundCloud have actually since added a detector, and will warn you saying "It looks like you have a Flash blocker browser setting or extension. Please enable Flash to hear sound." Also, whereas before the Flash element was invisible, now there's a target to click on if you do have Flash content blocked. Very well done actually.
> Also, whereas before the Flash element was invisible, now there's a target to click on if you do have Flash content blocked.
I saw that warning earlier today when I made my comment (note that the screenshot of the enabler pop-up shows SoundCloud as the URL), and thought maybe I had just missed it before.
Alas, I just tried an actual sound page, and the result was as before. I didn't see any "click to play" items, and clicking around the page (on obvious targets like the Play button, and less obvious targets like the progress bar and times) revealed nothing either. Where do you see the new target?
The problem was that you had to, as the article says, "click" to play content. This was fine on YouTube, Netflix, etc., since there was a very obvious visual cue about how to activate your content [2]. However, not all sites had such obvious cues. SoundCloud, for example, would just silently fail, and I would have to manually disable the feature to get it to play (in practice, I just loaded the URL in Chrome).
Since Firefox 18, this has been much better. Now, there is an area next to the address bar that you can use to enable content, even if there is nothing on the actual page that you can click [3]. When you click this area, a pop-up appears asking which plugins you would like to load, and if you would like to always allow plugins on that site.
This pop-up is hidden for the most part, and isn't trivially discoverable[4] - something Mozilla really needs to work on - but it does pop-up the very first time you encounter a page with blocked content (per Firefox session, it seems), so there is at least some notification that you can unblock content.
If they're planning on having this feature enabled by default, I really doubt it will be the end of the world for most people. They'll just click the notification, and play through.
[1] Set the value of `plugins.click_to_play` to `true`. If it doesn't exist, create a new Boolean value for it, setting the name/value as above.
[2] http://i.imgur.com/jhxqoJ9.png
[3] http://i.imgur.com/RNXw1JO.png
[4] Admittedly, this could be because I'm using a non-default theme on my install, so perhaps this is more obvious by default. I haven't checked.