SWFObject Firefox Problem

It seems that there is a recent problem with SWFObject in Firefox: SWFObject does not load Flash, and it just keeps displaying the alternative content for browsers without Flash enabled. Upgrading Flash player does not solve this Firefox specific problem.

The ironic part is that it seems that the source code of SWFObject has not been changed recently. So this bug is related with Firefox, and most probably, with a corrupted automatic Flash Player update that conflicts with SWFObject just in Firefox. A normal reinstallation of the latest Flash Player does not seem to solve the problem.

One way to solve specific SWF Object problems in Firefox is disabling the automatic hiding of the alternate content till the Flash content is fully loaded. This bug has been reported for Firefox 3.5 and is solved just by adding swfobject.switchOffAutoHideShow() in the SWFObject code.

Another thing to check is adding all the Javascript code for SWFObject inside the document head. Placing the code for initialization inside the document body seems to make SWFObject stop working in Firefox.

If all the previous fixes fail, the only way to solve this SWFObject problem in Firefox thus far would be reverting to a very old SWFObject version. Both SWFObject 2.1 and the recent SWFObject 2.2 versions seem to be experiencing this problem in Firefox, but versions from when SWFObject was still called FlashObject seem to work fine.

If this problem is not solved quickly it would be better to remove SWFObject from the webpage, or probably several Firefox users won't be accessing the Flash content. The latest posts on this bug tracking thread seem to be closely related to this bug. Let's keep an eye on it till the fix is found.

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Posted by ESV

Defending copyright with a click

Discover copyright infringements with a right click

I recently showed you a way to find image copies with TinEye. But, did you know that there is a TinEye Plugin that allows you to quickly search for image duplicates?

The image search plugin is available for Internet Explorer and Firefox, and it makes searching for images as simple as right clicking on them (without the need to submit an image file or URL).

But be careful! If you install the image search plugin you will find that checking the popularity of your photographs through Internet or defending the copyright of your images and pictures may be an addictive task!

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Posted by ESV

Mozilla Firefox cache and configuration

Mozilla Firefox Cache and Advanced Configuration

We can directly access the contents of Mozilla Firefox Cache by typing about:cache in the browser's address bar.

There are 2 cache sections inside: Memory Cache Device and Disk Cache Device. The first one is the most useful cache section. Just click List Cache Entries, or access directly typing in the address bar the following line: about:cache?device=memory. That's the way to obtain a complete listing of cache objects read by Firefox.

This cache listing in Firefox is useful to locate the full paths to images, videos or Flash content, that was actually read by Firefox, but whose original source URL was unknown. For example, if we want to save some content which was enclosed inside a Pop-up window, with right click disabled, we could still get such content from the cache of Firefox, and so on.

Advanced Firefox Configuration Options

By typing about:config in Firefox address bar, we will enter a configuration menu or configuration options listing with a lot of the browser configuration stuff.

Once we have accessed this Firefox configuration menu, we have a very useful filtering option which can be used to locate things to configure. We can change almost anything in Firefox using these configuration options.

For example, using accessibility.typeaheadfind.enablesound we can activate or deactivate the Firefox sound error emitted when, in the Firefox search field (Control + F), we type something that Firefox cannot find in the current webpage. We should modify the option value, changing it from true to false.

Most of these advanced options can be configured by typing "true" or "1" to enable, and "false" or "0" to disable.

These Firefox configuration options may admit numeric values different from 0 or 1, such as a pixel value, a time in milliseconds, a size in Bytes... That's only a little bit of deductive logic, taking into account which kind of option is modified by such numeric value.

Here are a couple of examples with different values:

browser.cache.disk.capacity = the maximum amount of disk space that can be used by Firefox.

browser.download.defaultFolder = URL with the default location to store downloaded files.

browser.history_expire_days = the value represents the number of days that Firefox History would be kept.

You just have to read these advanced options to understand what are they used for: Firefox option names are fairly descriptives by themselves. Or it is just a matter of trial and error. Don't be afraid of testing or of breaking Firefox. Every Firefox configuration option can be fixed again by uninstalling, erasing the options folder and reinstalling the web browser.

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Posted by Dremin