$ cat /dev/brain > /dev/blog

Upgrade to Firefox 4 today… or wait just a little longer…

Firefox 4 will be released today. As with every major version update, this one is still suffering from the same issue: add-on developer haven’t pushed their add-ons forward to work with the most recent version of the web browser.

Although most of them might still work, a few of them, e.g., the inline PDF display add-on on the Mac, will break. Best case, the add-on will be marked as incompatible but the user can still use it (if they disable the compatibility check). Worst case, a feature which the user got used to is suddenly gone (“It used to work! Why is it broken after the update?”). And they’re not going to blame the add-on author, they’ll rant against the Firefox browser or the folks at Mozilla.

I hope Mozilla can come up with a plan to encourage at least the authors of the most downloaded/used add-ons to fix their add-ons as soon as possible — prior to a major release.

Update: The AusweisApp add-on (used for authenticating yourself on a number of websites using your German ID) is just one of the add-ons which broke after the Firefox 4 upgrade…

Update 2: If you’d like to try out Firefox 4 on Ubuntu, install it through the Mozilla Team PPA.

Firefox on OS X: Java not working?

With recent Firefox versions (3.6, 4.0 beta), I was unable to view any kind of website that uses Java on my Mac.

Browsing through the about:plugins page I found out that I had three different versions of the Java Embedding Plugin (MRJPlugin.plugin) loaded in Firefox — two of them in addition to the one that already ships with Firefox!

The additional add-ons were found in

• /Library/Internet Plug-Ins
• <user>/Library/Internet Plugins/

After deleting those and restarting Firefox, I was able to enjoy the beauty of Java applets again!¹

1. OK, that was a lie. But I was at least able to use the postage stamp printing application on the DHL website… [↩]

Samsung LE32B652 Firmware-Upgrade

Ende letzten Jahres haben wir uns auch (endlich!) einen Flatscreen (LCD-Fernseher) ins Wohnzimmer gestellt. Ich hatte den Samsung LE32B652 als Schnäppchen bei Amazon gefunden. Die Ausstattung passte: Streaming übers Netzwerk per DLNA, USB-Anschluss für Festplatten/USB-Sticks. MPEG4 (H.264), DiVX etc.

Auf der Webseite von Samsung finden sich mittlerweile neben ausführlichen Anleitungen zum Upgrade der Firmware auch eine aktualisierte Firmware (Version T-CHL7DEUC-3000.2). Die Handbücher gibt’s im PDF- wie auch im offenen DjVu-Format — aber bei der Firmware hat mal wieder keiner mitgedacht und die in einen .exe-Self-Installer gepackt. Also nix für Mac- und Linux-User.

Der Inhalt der Datei lässt sich flugs mittels Windows-VM oder wine entpacken, notfalls einfach bei einem Bekannten mit einer Windose. Das aus diesem Archiv entpackte Verzeichnis T-CHL7DEUC wird dann auf einen leeren USB-Stick kopiert (diesen vorher mit FAT formatieren).

Vorsicht: Beim nun folgenden Firmware-Upgrade werden alle Einstellungen (Senderlisten, Netzwerkeinstellungen etc.) gelöscht!

Anschließend den USB-Stick in den Fernseher stecken und über das Menü

Menü -> Unterstützung -> Software-Upgrade -> PER USB

auswählen.

Der Fernseher sucht dann eine Weile nach den Update-Dateien, fragt noch einmal nach einer Bestätigung, ob das Firmware-Upgrade auf Version 003000 wirklich durchgeführt werden soll und dann geht’s los. Der Fernseher startet nach Beendigung des Update-Vorgangs neu und kann dann wieder eingerichtet werden (Sprache, Kanalbelegung etc.).

Auf den ersten Blick haben sich vor allem der Sendersuchlauf im analogen Kabel geändert: S-Kanäle werden nun korrekt gefunden — das ist aber für mich eher uninteressant, da wir ja einen digitalen Kabel-Anschluss bei Kabel BW haben. Die Programminfos sind besser strukturiert und die Menüs scheinen schneller verfügbar zu sein. Außerdem lässt sich die Sprache von Mehrkanal-Sendungen jetzt einfacher auswählen.

Bild: “richard ashcroft:brave new world”; CC-licensed on flickr by visualpanic.

The first time I acutally downgraded software

You know how it is with geeks. Give them something shiny, new with buttons and fancy sound effects (“swooooosh”) and they’ll love it. Same goes for software: give them a piece of code glued together that perfectly serves its purpose — awesome.

One of the applications I really love and use all the time is the Firefox web browser.

Unfortunately, things turned out to be a little nasty on OS X since Firefox reached version 3.6. When I first upgraded, I noticed a bug that caused Firefox to open two windows when a link was clicked in another application. Not nice, but I could have lived with that until it’s fixed.

Next, Firefox stopped working at all after I updated some add-ons. I tried to reproduce the problem and wanted to boil it down to a particular defective add-on. To be honest, I suspected Weave Browser Sync to be the culprit. I even tried starting Firefox with a fresh, empty profile and installed 2 or 3 other add-ons, several times in various order. Kaboom. No need to mention that even the Firefox nightly build was crashing on me. The solutions described in a related bug report unfortunately didn’t help either.

The sad solution to my problem: I was downgrading to the latest version of the “old” Firefox 3.5 branch, namely Firefox 3.5.9. It does not have all the fancy new features of 3.6 and support ends in August 2010 but at least it’s working. I’ll try 3.7 4.0 when it’s stable and hope the problem has been fixed then as others describe the same issue in various posts in the Mozilla forums.

Update: The problem seems to be fixed in Firefox 4.0 beta 1.

Using Your Logitech Multimedia Keyboard with OS X Leopard

Logitech, an industry leader in the computer peripherals market, provides an application called Logitech Control Center (LCC) to support their keyboards and mice under Mac OS X.

LCC internally used Unsanity’s Application Enhancer (APE) which unfortunately is not yet supported within OS X version 10.5 (Leopard). APE was one of the reasons why users weren’t able to straight-forwardly upgrade their Tiger installations to Leopard, ending up with some kind of blue screen once the installation was finished and they wanted to boot into their shiny new OS. Instructions for removing APE (highly recommended before upgrading to Leopard) can be found on the Apple support website.

So far, the special keys (“iTouch”, “Search”, “Shopping” etc.) on the Logitech keyboards can’t be used with Leopard. But at least most of the Media Control buttons (skip forward/backward, play/pause and the volume control) actually work and those are almost the only special keys I need on that keyboard.

What bothered me was the fact that the key binding for the Windows/Option and the Alt/Apple/Command keys were mixed up: on my MacBook Pro, the order of the keys (from left to right) is Control, Option, Command. The Logitech keyboard uses the same labels on the keys but with the factory settings of OS X, the Windows key acts as Apple’s Command key and the Alt key is used as the Option key. This is quite strange because you’re always hitting the wrong keys when you’re often switching between “docked” mode (using an external keyboard when you’re working on your desk) and “road warrior” mode when you’re using the MBP’s internal keyboard.

Luckily, with Leopard you’re able to change the key bindings within the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane of OS X’s System Preferences individually for each keyboard that is connected to your Mac (see the screenshot below). The Logitech keyboard shows up as “USB Receiver” in the keyboards list. After selecting this from the list, just change the binding of the Option and Command keys to each other’s function and voilà — it’s working.

Logitech keyboard picture by bargainmoose, CC-licensed.