Category: Firefox

Can’t Close GMail Tasks Window

digitaleagle Chrome, Firefox, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I just helped a friend with a “GMail” problem.  He couldn’t close the “tasks” window.  I found that it might be a somewhat common problem — I found a Google Groups post regarding the problem (Google Groups: Help! Can’t close Tasks).

Here’s what it looks like with the task Window open where you can’t see the close button:

GMail Zoomed with Tasks Open

The issue is that the resolution is too small to display the title bar of the tasks.  Therefore, you can’t click the close button.

I read that in some cases it was the screen resolution.  In my case, it was because the window was zoomed in.  That is a feature of the browser rather than GMail itself.  In this case, I am using the Google Chrome browser.  In the view menu, you’ll see the options.

Zoom Options in Google Chrome

The “Zoom In” will make things larger so that you can read things better.  It might distort the page a little, which is what it is doing here.  The “Zoom Out” option shrinks it back so that you can see more on the page.  The “Actual Size” resets things back to normal.

I believe most of the different browsers support this feature.  You will find the option in different places, but I think they use the same keyboard shortcuts.  If you hold the Ctrl key down, the plus ( + ) makes things bigger, and minus ( – ) shrinks it back.  Holding the Ctrl key and pressing zero ( 0 ) resets things back to normal.

So, in this case, hitting Ctrl + 0 fixes it so we can see the close button:

GMail fixed

Here are some of the other browsers’ documentation for zooming:

Troubleshooting: Playing DRM Videos from Amazon

digitaleagle Amazon Instant Video, Firefox, My Acer Media Laptop, Uncategorized, Video Leave a comment

This is the second time this has happened.  I keep getting:

Sorry we were unable to stream this video.  This is likely because your flash player could not be updated.

I had just reinstalled my media laptop with Linux Lite OS (a flavor of Ubuntu), and I was trying to watch a video from Amazon.  It was one of the Prime Instant Videos.

To fix the issue, I followed McDougall’s instructions.  Basically, it was just installing the “hal” package and deleting the .adobe and .macromedia settings directories:

sudo apt-get install hal
rm -r ~/.adobe ~/.macromedia

Finally, I rebooted and retried.  It all worked fine after that.

Resources

WebEx in Fedora 15 (64 bit)

digitaleagle Firefox, Java, Uncategorized, WebEx 10 Comments

At one point, I thought WebEx was working natively in 64-bit Linux.  Either I am mistaken or it no longer works on 64-bit.  So, I decided to dust off my old 32-bit hack where you install 32-bit versions of Java and Firefox to make it all work.

Earlier, I had thought I would use my regular 64-bit installation, and I had posted my hooking Java up to Firefox for WebEx.  I was rightly corrected on troshlyak’s blog.  The 64-bit will work, but you can’t share your desktop or view another’s desktop.  So, I am back to the old way.  So, here’s what I did…

I downloaded the two programs:

I created a directory in ~/bin/webex to hold it all.  Under that, I put the Java SDK under the “jdk1.7.0_01” directory.  Then, I put Firefox under “firefox”.

Environment Script:

I created this script in ~/bin/webex/env.sh:

#!/bin/sh

export WEBEX_HOME=~/bin/webex
export JDK_HOME=$WEBEX_HOME/jdk1.7.0_01
export JAVA_HOME=$JDK_HOME/jre
export FIREFOX_HOME=$WEBEX_HOME/firefox
export MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH=$FIREFOX_HOME/plugins
export PATH=$FIREFOX_HOME:$JAVA_HOME/bin/:$JDK_HOME/bin/:$PATH

To make sure you have it right, you can check it like this:

[skp@pecan bin]$ . ~/bin/webex/env.sh
[skp@pecan bin]$ which java
~/bin/webex/jdk1.7.0_01/jre/bin/java
[skp@pecan bin]$ java -version
java version "1.7.0_01"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_01-b08)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 21.1-b02, mixed mode)

Now, you can link in the Java plugin like this:

mkdir $MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH
ln -s $JAVA_HOME/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so $MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH/libnpjp2.so

Now, fire up firefox.  Note you may be asked to create the WebEx profile.  Make sure you create a profile with the same name you use on the command line so it won’t ask you again.

firefox --no-remote -P WebEx http://java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp

This should give you a successful Java applet working on the test page.  You also should see the architecture as i386.

Java Test Successful and shows i386

Finally, I created a ~/bin/webex.sh script to launch webex easily for me.

#!/bin/bash

cd ~/bin/webex
. ./env.sh
firefox --no-remote -P WebEx

And you should be good to go.

Great Links for Firefox

digitaleagle Firefox, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I found some great links for Firefox.  I am having some trouble with performance.  When I backspace, it is painfully slow.  Here are some links that might help (I am still working through them):

Firefox optimization and troubleshooting thread

Command Line Options

I knew about the -P option to use different profiles, but that doesn’t allow you to have multiple sessions still.  But, I learned from this page that I could add the -no-remote option to run multiple profiles at the same time.  This way I can have two instances or sessions running at the same time.  I can separate multiple web applications.

Installing Firefox 3 beta3

digitaleagle Firefox, How To, Software Updates, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I mostly followed Ubuntu Geek’ instructions.

I made the backup of the profile directory:

sudo cp -R ~/.mozilla ~/.mozillabackup

I checked in Synpatic package manager and found that libstdc++5 was already installed.

I followed the link they provided for downloading the new version.

I extracted it as they suggested to the /opt directory:

sudo tar -C /opt -jxvf firefox-3.0b3.tar.bz2

For the plugins, I created the link that they suggested. Make sure you see that you have the right plugins directory — it looked like there could be various locations for the plugins.

cd /opt/firefox/plugins/
ls /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/* .
I found some information about controlling profiles, and so, I created a different profile for Firefox3. First, I created a copy for Firefox:

cp -r .mozilla .firefox3
/opt/firefox/firefox -P “firefox3”

The first time, it brought up the “Choose User Profile” dialog. So, I clicked on the Create Profile button and created a new profile by the name of firefox3. For the path, I chose $HOME/.firefox3/firefox/tgvjuj9r.default (the copy of my default profile).