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In Google Chrome, I have my options set so that all plugins are click-to-play. For the most part, this works fine. However, sometimes, Chrome will show the Chrome plugin blocked icon on a page that I can't find a plugin on, even by looking through the source html of the page. There's no element on the page that I can see that is asking me to click it to play the plugin. Is there a way to identify exactly what plugin(s) Google is asking me to play?

I'm aware that I can go through and disable extensions to see if one of those is causing it, but in general, it'd be nice to know what I'm enabling when I run plugins, so I'd still like to know if there is a way to identify them.

Note: These settings can be obtained by the following steps:

  1. about:flags > disable Block all third-party cookies
  2. options > Under the Hood > Plugins > Click To Play
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  • Any clues if you right-click the icon and choose "Inspect Element"?
    – ale
    May 20, 2011 at 23:13
  • @AlEverett, there's no element in the page that I can see to do that to. Just the icon in the omnibar.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    May 20, 2011 at 23:21
  • Ah. Hmmm...Got an URL I could try it out on?
    – ale
    May 20, 2011 at 23:22
  • Is "Click to Play" in the Beta channel? I can't find it in 11 stable. (I know I could go to about:///.)
    – Mateen Ulhaq
    May 20, 2011 at 23:40
  • @AlEverett, blanking on what url I've seen it on, will updated when I figure it out.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    May 20, 2011 at 23:43

1 Answer 1

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You should be able to find them by looking through the embed tags and perhaps the newer canvas tags.

  1. Start the Developer tools from the Wrench -> Tools menu.

  2. Search for embed and canvas, enumerate through the found tags.

  3. Repeat the search for both the Elements and Scripts tab.

In my case I have Cooliris installed, and apparently thanks to you I have just discovered that it always loads:

enter image description here

PS: I'm using Firefox 6.0a1 as a main browser, but Google Chrome and IE9 as a back-up for when Firefox 6.0a1 breaks.

However, if enabling the plug-in is allowed, you could simply open Task Manager from the Tools menu and check the latest plug-in(s) that was/were launched. Which indicates what plug-in(s) the site ran.

enter image description here

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  • Yup, as mentioned in the question, I have looked through the source code trying to identify what it could be and that didn't help.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    May 20, 2011 at 23:45
  • @Rebecca: Can you try to do the same query in the Scripts tab? Perhaps it's loaded outside the DOM. Or it's removed after it was inserted, in my case there is also an embed in one of the scripts to insert Cooliris code.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    May 20, 2011 at 23:46
  • yes, that's possible. But please not that the focus on my question is an easy way to identify what I'm running when I click to run all plugins in the page. Searching through potentially many js requests is not "easy", and definitely not for someone who isn't comfortable with code.
    – Rebecca Chernoff
    May 20, 2011 at 23:50
  • I'm afraid there isn't any native way to do that @Rebecca, there isn't really functionality to get plugins information. Perhaps there might be a Web Developer kind of extension that allows you to list them, or perhaps you could see if enabling logging allows you to see it, but that would be an annoying way to check it. And while it indeed goes into the code, the Search box will look through all the lines in all the scripts, and looking at the type attribute inside the embeds you find can quickly reveal what plugin it could be.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    May 20, 2011 at 23:56
  • @Rebecca: Updated my answer which a suggestion for when you can run the plug-in...
    – Tamara Wijsman
    May 21, 2011 at 0:01

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