I prefer Mozilla Firefox because it is WAY better than IE in all aspects.. . Plugins are required to run flash objects, java applets and videos etc...Internet Explorer has those plugins installed as well, they just happen to be pre-installed with windows. There really isn't a way around it.. . If you want to avoid downloading the plugins on demand, you can download the software seperately and install them on your own so you don't get the plugin message later.. . This is how you can do that:. . 1) Download and install firefox (source 1). 2) Download and install JRE (source 2). 3) Download and install Flash (source 3). 4) Download and install Quicktime (source 4). . I hate quicktime, but I have it installed anyway. Do that and you should be able to avoid most plugin requests.