Spind.net Blog » Firefox

Fedora 14 and choppy Flash sound

hc — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 13:04:16 +0000

This bothered me like crazy, as I thought the problem was my setup or some bug in pulseaudio. Turns out a recent optimization in memcpy() and a bug in Adobe Flash means that audio in Flash 10 under Fedora 14 can give choppy/jerky sound. Apparently the only thing Adobe has to do, is change calls to memcpy() to memmove() instead, but Linux development seems to be moving at a non-existing pace at Adobe.

Ray Strode from Red Hat got sick of waiting and wrote a somewhat hacky script that will go through the Flash .so and replace calls to memcpy() with calls to memmove(). Get it here: memcpy-to-memmove.sh.

Firefox refuses to remember my passwords

hc — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:02:25 +0000

I’ve had a few issues with my Firefox previously, but this time it somehow forgot all my saved passwords and stopped offering to remember new ones. This one was a quickie, but I’ll post it for later reference.

This problem can be fixed by removing the files key3.db and signons3.txt from your Firefox profile directory. On Unix, it’s usually a random generated directory under ~/.mozilla/firefox. Be aware that removing these files will remove any stored passwords – mine were already gone though.

My Firefox plugins

hc — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:36:56 +0000

My Firefox recently suffered from aggressive dementia, and forgot all the tweaks and add-ons I had applied. Good plugins are hard to find, so here’s the list of the ones I use:

Adblock Plus – no more ads
iMacros – automate repetitive tasks in Firefox
Firebug – website development tools (debugging etc.)
Pixel Perfect – Firebug extension that helps you get your site pixel perfect
Web Developer – offers all kinds of neat web developer tools (cookie management, cache on/off, CSS help etc.)

Enjoy

Go-to-root bookmarklet

hc — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:59:03 +0000

Found this one over at michaelhoney.com – a bookmarklet that directs you to the root of whatever site you’re currently browsing. Just drag it to your bookmark bar:

Goto root

Sun JRE on Firefox

hc — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:48:31 +0000

I rarely need a Java plugin for my 64-bit Firefox browser, but once in a rare while I need to use certain government services that require a digital signature and the original Sun Java plugin – OpenJDK just doesn’t cut it. Sun changed a couple of things recently, so many of the howto’s are outdated – this will work though:

Make sure you remove/disable OpenJDK:

$ rpm -e java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin

Get the latest Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) here. Make sure it’s the 64-bit non-RPM version. The RPM might work too, I just didn’t test it. We’ll assume it’s version 1.6.0-12. Execute the following commands to unpack it:

$ umask 022
$ chmod +x jre-6u12-linux-x64.bin
$ ./jre-6u12-linux-x64.bin

Accept the license agreement. The directory jre1.6.0_12 is created. Execute the following commands to move JRE and make a symbolic link to the plugin:

$ mv jre1.6.0_12 /opt
$ cd /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins
$ ln -s /opt/jre1.6.0_12/lib/amd64/libnpjp2.so .

The new thing here is that they recently renamed the plugin from libjavaplugin_oji.so to libnpjp2.so – that set me off track for a while.

Restart Firefox and type in about:plugins and look for Java – if it’s there, you’re all set.