firefox not offering the right plugins

[Jonathan Berry]

On Apr 1, 2005 11:35 AM, Matt Morgan <minxmertzmomo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 1, 2005 11:32 AM, jim lawrence <fedorajim at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Apr 1, 2005 10:42 AM, Matt Morgan <minxmertzmomo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > When I looks at Edit--Preferences--Downloads, I see a list of plugins
> > > that looks like this:
> > >
> > > PDF     PDF File                    acroread
> > >             Windows WMV File        gmplayer
> > > DOC     DOC File                   openoffice.org-1.9
> > >
> > > That is what I want, and it reflects what I have set by checking the
> > > "always use this from now on" checkbox, when offered the option.
> > >
> > > But when I click on a link for a wmv, firefox offers totem as the
> > > default; when I click on a PDF, it offers kpdf as the default; and
> > > when I click on a DOC it offers oowriter (v 1.1.3) as the default. I
> > > have to go search for the app I really want every time.
> > >
> > > So it looks like Firefox is writing to one settings file, but reading
> > > from another. This is Firefox 1.02, installed and updated regularly
> > > via yum. I only noticed the problem pretty recently, maybe in the last
> > > month or two. Maybe it's related to a recent firefox update?
> > >
> > > Any suggestions? I tried grepping through ~/.mozilla/firefox for any
> > > files containing "totem," just to see if I could change the list of
> > > helper apps manually, but I couldn't find anything that included totem
> > > in the first place.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Matt
> > >
> > For giggles in your browser  type in the address  about:plugins
> > See if you have mplayer  if not
> > yum install mplayerplug-in
> >
> > if you don't usse totum just remove it
> 
> Thanks. Mplayer is installed and working. I realize I was pretty
> unclear about this, now, but literal "plugins" work. That is, when
> something is embedded in the html page, mplayerplug-in plays it fine.
> It's when it's a direct link just to the file (whether .pdf, .wmv.
> .avi, .doc, or whatever) that Firefox doesn't handle it the way it
> says it will. What we used to call "helper apps" don't get offered up
> according to what Firefox says it will do. It says it will default to
> openoffice.org-1.9, but then it defaults to oowriter (1.1.3) instead.
> 
> I cannot find a reference to totem anywhere in my homedir, yet when I
> click on a link to a WMV file, firefox wants to run totem. I'll remove
> totem, but that doesn't sound like it will get gmplayer to start
> instead.
> 
> Thanks!

Hi Matt,
It sounds like something isn't working with Firefox.  You weren't real
clear, but is sounds like Firefox is still bringing up the "what do
you want to do with this?" box with the mentioned (undesired) apps as
defaults, so you have to go look for the ones you really want to use. 
Since you have your desired defaults set in
Edit->Preferences->Downloads (note, these are not plugins, but default
actions), Firefox should not be prompting you about what to do.  If
you click on one entry and click the "Change Action..." button, what
does the resulting dialog say it should be doing?  I was able to
successfully configure Firefox to download a .doc file in oowriter,
and then I changed it to use abiword, and both worked as expected. 
I'm running the same version of Firefox on a fully updated FC3
(x86_64, but that shouldn't matter, still running 32-bit Firefox).
Am I right that you are seeing the Download prompt box every time?  Or
is Firefox automatically downloading and displaying the file in the
inappropriate default program, despite what you have set?
I don't know if this might affect things, but are you running Gnome or
KDE?  I'm running Gnome, I can try switching over to KDE to see if it
breaks the default action or not.

Jonathan