Quoting Andrew Lewman first-time users feedback:

Sixth issue: no flash, no warning

2 of 8 people had flash apps on their website. 4 of 8 had ad banners that used flash. All were surprised at the red outline with a snake in it appearing instead of their flash apps. None understood what happened.

After an explanation, one person suggested changing the red outline with snake to an actual message written inside, along the lines of ‘this app blocked for your protection. click here to unblock it.’ I explained why that wouldn’t work (because there is no flash, java, silverlight plugins installed) and their answer was ‘then do not show it at all’. Inside noscript, I unchecked the ‘show placeholder..’ option and had them browse again. they were happy. It seems if the user cannot do anything about the blocked apps, not showing them may be preferred.

Eliminating them is not really the right thing, because they have the additional purpose of preserving the layout of the original page. It would be better to merely blank out the NoScript icon in the image, leaving a blank (or perhaps invisible) rectangle, so users are not led to click on them. Thanks to velope for the suggestion!

Let’s test how this plays with easier YouTube (Feature #5476) and NoScript’s click-to-play feature for HTML5 videos.