Firefox and Java JRE update problem fixed

May 24, 2006 in Firefox, browsers, thought-after by Lafinboy | 52 comments

This article was originally published on 28/03/2005.

Firefox browser could not display Java applets following a recent upgrade to the Firefox browser and the Java JRE. A simple solution found.

A little background to this story. As a devout convert to the Firefox browser, I immediately upgraded to the latest release, Version 1.0.2, when it became available. Shortly after upgrading the Firefox browser I found I was unable to access my internet banking account, and was displayed a standard message from the internet banking service that my browser did not have Java installed. Necessity forced me to use IE, which worked with no problems. I had also accessed the internet banking account through Firefox only a few days previously, so there was something wrong with Firefox!

I dutifully checked my browser settings and Java was enabled. I then checked the Java control panel and noticed that the option to use Java with Mozilla/Netscape was unchecked. Found the culprit? Unfortunately not. After checking the option and pressing apply, I was informed that the action could not be completed as I did not have sufficient rights to change the browser settings. Now this was a concern, as I am administrator, super-administrator, and any other kind of controlling power over my pc, or so I thought.

Time to start on a solution, so Google in hand I went on a wild search for others who had faced the same problem. It would seem that this is a reasonably new problem (at the time of writing), as very few results were returned. Those results that were on-topic offered a selection of causes/solutions, none of which worked for me. As a result of trying each solution in turn, and scouring through the folders and files associated with both Firefox and Java, I did find what was the apparent cause of the problem in my case. On the latest update to the Java JRE, the Java Plugin dll had not been updated in the Firefox plugins folder. On a whim I renamed the existing Java plugin dll and fired up Firefox again, and hey presto, everything was working. Now I don't know why the original dll had not been updated, but it hadn't, and I don't know if this solution will work for everybody, but it did for me, and I offer this advice in the hope that it can help somebody in the same position as I found myself.

Symptoms:

  • Unable to view Java applet content in Firefox browser

Cause:

  • Upgrade of Java JRE to version 1.5.0_02 does not update Java plugin dll in Firefox plugins folder

Solution:

  • Delete previous Java plugin dll file NPOJI610.dll from Firefox plugins folder.
  • Prior to deleting the file I would suggest renaming the file (zz_NPOJI610.dll) to test that this solution works for you.

Machine Spec:

  • Windows XP Pro SP1
  • Firefox 1.0.1
  • Java JRE 1.5.0_02

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Web Essentials is dead - long live Web Directions

April 14, 2006 in Web Directions, conferences, wd06 by Lafinboy | No comments

As the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining, and the silver lining to the demise of the Web Essentials conferences in Sydney is the birth of Web Directions.

The new WD06 conference is organised and managed by two of the three people who brought us WE04 and WE05, Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp, and their intention is to bring us more of the same, and better. Details for the conference and associated workshops, scheduled for 26th to 29th September 2006, are to be released at the beginning of May.

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CSS Naked Day

April 5, 2006 in CSS, thought-after by Lafinboy | 1 comment

Wondering where the fancy site has gone? What happened to the layout, the images, the niceties? Fear not - this is a temporary change to support CSS Naked Day, a push to encourage web developers to open up their sites to the harsh glare of public scrutiny. Will your site stand up to being naked for a day? Go on, give it a go - in cyberspace nobody can see you blush!

Reading this after 6th April 2006? The nakedness has passed, and the site is fully clothed again.

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DST and the Commonwealth Games 2006

March 26, 2006 in thought-after by Lafinboy | No comments

Ahh - what a way to start a Sunday! As most of my home/office is controlled by Internet time, and the standard rule for determining the end of DST in Australia is that the clocks go back 1 hour on the last Sunday of March, today caused a little confusion for me. On waking I found that all of my PC connected appliances told the time as 1 hour less than my non-PC linked appliances. A quick check found that indeed today should have been the day that DST ended and clocks should have wound back 1 hour at 3am in the morning. Alas, due to the Commonwealth Games taking place in Melbourne, the Australian government had decided that the end of DST for 2006 should fall 1 week later on 2nd April 2006. While this arbitrary decision may have been well advertised in Australia (though I had no personal knowledge of it), it has not been accommodated by any of the world time services. So the upshot is that my PC will be 1 hour ahead of time for 1 whole week. I would have thought that in an age where a lot of things are controlled by internet timing mechanisms, it would have been easier to reschedule the Commonwealth Games to start 1 week earlier, or at the very least have all of the major SNTP servers alerted to the arbitary change in the end of DST. The only good thing - I had a whole extra hour of coding today, as my alarm woke me 1 hour earlier than expected!

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Serving the correct MIME type

March 16, 2006 in Content Negotiation, HTML, MIME Types, PHP, XHTML, browsers by Lafinboy | No comments

Working with XHTML is all very commendable, but if the default (read wrong) MIME type is sent to the UA then you are still only sending HTML documents out to browserland. If this is the case you may as well work with the HTML doctype. So how do you send the correct MIME type for XHTML?

There are various methods depending on your situation. One can configure the server to send the correct MIME type based on file type, use httpd or htaccess files, or force the correct MIME type through the header of the page using your favourite server side code (ASP, PHP, .NET, et al). There's just one problem though - Internet Explorer currently doesn't support documents served with the

application/xhtml+xml MIME type. This is where we need to perform a negotiation between the server and browser about the media types the browser can accept, and which one it prefers. Read the rest of this entry »

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