209562 - Unable to use Firebird as TopStyle internal preview browser after registering mozctlx.dll

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 222472

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Bill Mason]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030614 Mozilla Firebird/0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030614 Mozilla Firebird/0.6

To try to use Firebird as the internal preview browser in TopStyle 3.1, I
registered mozctlx.dll per the instructions at
http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/support/gecko.asp

The registration returned a successful result, but when you actually try to
preview with Firebird in TopStyle, the error "Access violation at address
600FBBF7 in module 'mozctl.dll'" is returned.

The procedure at http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/support/gecko.asp works
successfully using zipped builds of Mozilla.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Follow the instructions at http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/support/gecko.asp
2. Set Gecko as the internal preview browser in TopStyle.
3. Preview a CSS file.

Actual Results:  
Access violation at address 600FBBF7 in module 'mozctl.dll'.

Expected Results:  
Previewed without throwing an error.

Comment 1

[CharlesTaylor]

This appears to effect Moz as well as Pheonix, This feature is broken in
HTML-Kit too. The DLL's are properly registered, from the common files/GRE
folder. No error in KIT, the display is just a blank white screen.

HTML-Kit is from http://www.chami.com/html-kit/

HTML-Kit 292 (Current Free Version)
W2K, SP3
Gecko/20030612

Comment 2

[CharlesTaylor]

Whups! registering these dll kills HoTMetaL 6.0 too. Definitely a problem here.
I'm guessing this list will grow... Un-Reging them sets thins to working again.

Comment 3

[Bill Mason]

Charles, your Mozilla problem is actually an entirely separate issue.  For the
reasons for it and the workaround, see bug 208396.

Comment 4

[Adam Lock]

*** Bug 222473 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Adam Lock]

Bug 222473 explains the issue. The Mozilla control *can't* work because
MozillaFirebird.exe is linked with all the XPCOM components! It is still
possible for an .exe to be loaded like a .dll, so MozillaFirebird.exe could
expose the entry points that allowed it to be registered as a giant XPCOM server
but I seriously doubt that it does though.

So the most likely answer is to not distribute mozctlx.dll & mozctl.dll against
static builds, which is covered by bug 222472. I can probably add some test so
the ActiveX dir is ignored if static is defined.

In the meantime, I have stuck a standalone control installer on my website.

Comment 6

[Bill Mason]

Adam, the standalone controller worked fine on my WinXP system, successfully
running Topstyle 3 and Homesite 5 with Gecko as the internal preview browser.

Should this bug resolve as a WONTFIX (since the dll's will never work to do
this) or a dup of bug 222472 (removing the dll's)?  Or if there is a reason to
keep this bug open, should it move to Firebird/build-config as bug 222473 was
(remove the dll's from Firebird)?

Comment 7

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

going to dupe this against the bug to remove from static builds, as this is the
most likely solution.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 222472 ***