Does Mozilla have a Death Wish?

Yesterday afternoon, when I started my lab PC and logged onto the Internet, I discovered that Firefox had automatically updated itself to the next version. I had stayed with the 3.6.xx versions of Firefox out of concern that some of my add-ons wouldn't work under FF 4 or 5. Indeed, there has been a BUNCH of complaining online about such compatibility issues with the newer Firefox releases. Since I had been running 3.6.18, it updated to 3.6.20. As a result, java runtime didn't work any more. Oddly, flash ran great, but no java. I checked the mozilla plugins directory; the symlinks to the flash and java plugins were there. All looked well, but no java. So I tried removing the symlink to java and re-creating that. Still no success.

I have spent all afternoon today looking through online forums, uninstalling, and reinstalling Firefox - all to no avail. I downloaded, unzipped, and attempted to install Firefox 6, but the install scripts wouldn't work. No info available on this from Mozilla or any other forum I checked online.

Tonight I performed a clean install of Firefox 5.0. Oddly, there was NO mozilla plugins directory created in the process. I used the mkdir command and created my own mozilla plugins directory. Therein I created the symlinks to the flash player and java plugins. Flash works great on you-tube but java is still broken, so I can't access my online college courses using Firefox. And classes start next Monday.

Mozilla's troubleshooting guides, forums, ... are silent on this. And of course, there's nobody to yell at.

THANKS, Mozilla!!

I'll be testing Opera 11 and Google Chrome this weekend - though I've heard terrible things about the security of both these products.

As things sit right now I have the choice of a buggy, insecure operating system (Windows) with a fully functioning web browser(IE 9), or a good, relatively secure operating system (LINUX) and a lousy, broken web browser. Great way to start a new semester.

Sorry, but I HAVE to ask:
Does Mozilla have a death wish? Are they being paid by Micro$oft to torpedo the competition?? Is their management really as clueless as they appear??? Have they become "pod people" - occupied by alien body snatchers????

I don't have the answers to these burning questions. If any of my readers have any insight into this madness, I'd love to hear about it in the comments section. I'm absolutely stumped!

What I do know is that folks who work for a living and/or have other "mission critical" activities they are doing (Graduate school, in my case) do NOT HAVE TIME TO WASTE ON THIS NONSENSE!!!!

I seriously think Mozilla may have to lose most of its user base before they wise up. Many folks will simply take the easy way out and put up with M$ IE, rather than fight this kind of hassle. That would be a crying shame, as Firefox and LINUX were indeed a pretty unbeatable combination until recently.

Update: Activating Java Environment in Firefox

Long-time readers of my blog will remember my post regarding activation of Java runtime environment in Firefox web browser. Here's the link to that post:
http://inkarlslab.blogspot.com/2010/07/getting-java-to-work-in-firefox-366.html

LINUX users need to place a symbolic link to libnpjp2.so in their /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory.

To recap, here's how to do it - it's changed as of a couple Firefox releases ago:

Go to your /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory, su to root.

Type the following command [this is assuming you are using Java Version 1.6.25; if not then enter the version you are using]

ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_25/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

Because of an apparent problem with Oracle Java, users with SE LINUX enabled will
need to perform this additional command to adjust SE policy so that the plugin will work:

Again, as root -
chcon -t execmem_exec_t /usr/lib/firefox-3.6/firefox

MANY THANKS to these people for posting this solution!
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-f14.html#java

And the original bug report - Bug 628031:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=628031
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=628031

And the Fedora-forum thread on this subject:
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=255314

Here is the link for testing your installation:
http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp?detect=jre&try=1

It would be really nice if Mozilla and Oracle (the current makers of Java runtime) would post information on their web sites detailing this. It would also be really nice if Oracle would fix their code as discussed in the Bugzilla report.

Hope this post helps someone!!

Getting JAVA to work in Firefox 3.66: The REAL Scoop

Recently, my Ubuntu LINUX box - a 2.4GHz P4 - suffered a catastrophic hardware failure. I will have to replace the motherboard, CPU, and memory. I have a dual-boot system with Windows VISTA and Fedora LINUX which I set up for experiments and for work on my graduate school classes. The Fedora box lacked some of the software I needed for email reading, listening to MP3s, ... that I did on the Ubuntu box. So under duress I scrambled to set it up to handle the slack.

After an evening-long battle, I have finally gotten most of the software installed that I need for important everyday business. Other than updating Firefox to the latest version (3.6.6 as of this writing), one of the most basic requirements is JAVA, since so many web sites use it extensively.

In order to get JAVA running in the Firefox browser in a LINUX environment, you need to add a symbolic link (symlink in IT speak) in your /usr/mozilla/plugins directory. In the past, the file one wanted to link to was libjavaplugin_oji.so. That all has changed, but most sites on the Internet have NOT caught up with the times! The file you NOW want to make your symlink to is libnpjp2.so.

Use the format of the instructions you read everywhere else, but you can generally use this default path to link the proper file:
/usr/java/jre1.6.0_20/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so
If your JAVA runtime engine is installed in another directory, or is a different version, modify the path accordingly.

Here's what to do:
Using the command line, navigate to your /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory (usual default path), su to root, and type the command seen below.
ln -s /usr/java/jre1.6.0_20/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so

As stated earlier, if your JAVA is installed in a location different than /usr/java, or if you are using a different release of JAVA, modify this command accordingly.

Then do a "ls" command and make sure the libnpjp2.so symlink appears.

Once this is done, you need to test your installation to make sure it works. Go to Sun's Java Test Page. Click on the link to verify your JAVA version. If all is working correctly you should get a message confirming what version of the JAVA runtime engine you are running.

MANY, many thanks to Albert Hayr for this information! You can reach his site here.

In a future post I'll cover which repositories actually DO have the plugins for MP3 playing. I'm finding that there's considerable wrong information on this as well.

See my update to this article here: ORACLE Java Issues.