The script blocking options in the Google Chrome browser on the other hand are still very limited, which can be attributed to the architecture of the web browser according to the NoScript developer.

While it is possible to block plugins and JavaScript for all pages, and even enable them on some, it is not possible to block or enable scripts selectively.

Click To Play is a step in the right direction. Users with plugins blocked for all websites, can for instance use click to play to enable Flash selectively. Youtube videos are blocked in this configuration on page load, but can be activated and played with the click of the mouse.

That’s very comfortable as it saves bandwidth and increases the security in the web browser.

Click to Play has been recently added to the dev version of the Chrome browser. It has to be enabled with the command line switch --enable-click-to-play.

Plugins need to be blocked in Google Chrome for Click to Play to become useful. This is done by clicking on the Wrench icon and selecting Options from the menu.

Switching to the Under the bonnet tab and clicking on the Content Settings button opens the configuration menu. Plugins can be blocked in the Plug-ins submenu by selecting “Do not allow any site to use plug-ins”.

Sites that should not be affected by the plugin blocking can be whitelisted under Exceptions, so that all plugins are loaded normally on page load.

block plugins chrome

Every web page that tries to load a plugin will display information that the plugins were blocked on the page.

chrome click to play

A click on run plug-in this time will load the plugin. In the case of Youtube, play the video on the site.

Google Chrome indicates blocked plugins in the address bar as well. The new icon can be used to whitelist the domain, so that it is automatically added to the exceptions list.

google chrome plugins

Click to play is a step in the right direction. If the developers would only add that option for all scripts on a page, not only plugins. Still, it is an improvement over previous behavior.

Expect the new click to play functionality to be added soon in the beta and stable releases of the Google browser as well.

There are some launch parameters that are used more often than others. The parameter to enable extensions is definitely in the top list especially with the recent increase in extensions that get released for the Google browser.

Google finally made the decision to turn on extensions by default in all Google Chrome dev releases that are released in the future (Google Chrome 4.x). Users of the latest stable release of the web browser (Google Chrome 2.x) and those of the development builds of Google Chrome 3.x are still stuck with either no extension support at all or the need to enable it by launching Google Chrome with the command line parameter.

It is also not clear if the developers will enable extension support by default when they release Google Chrome 3 final.

Users with large computer monitors on the other hand will love the feature which is also available for other browsers. Firefox users can install the Firefox Split Browser extension which provides even more options and ways to split the browser.

The bookmarklet can be moved to the bookmarks so that it can be opened whenever it is needed. It will display a Javascript prompt upon execution for the first website and a second prompt after sending the first website that will contain the second url.

Both websites will then be displayed next to each other in the same Google Chrome window. Usability suffers quite a bit because of the Javascript prompts and no way of changing the contents other than following links or using forms that are visible on that site. It’s ideal on sites like Google Search but becomes a problem if the user wants to switch between sites that are not connected by links.

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