344496 - A parallel installation of FF 2.0b1 can not script the Real player plugin

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Michael Krax]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1b1) Gecko/20060710 Firefox/2.0b1

When installating FF 2.0b1 in parallel with 1.5 it can't script the Real player plugin. The plugin .dll and .xpt files don't get copied over properly to the firefox/plugins directory of 2.0. It seems the plugin itself works (based on the files in the 1.5 plugins folder), but not the scripting.

Scripting the plugin is important, especially if you use DHTML based controls for the player instead of the native controls of the plugin.



Reproducible: Always




Copying over all files from the RealPlayer/Netscape6 directory (nppl3260.dll, nppl3260.xpt, nprjplug.dll, nprpjplug.dll, nsJSRealPlayerPlugin.xpt) to the 2.0/plugins folder solves this issue.

To address this problem the installer should either copy those files from the Real player installation (preferred) or plugin sharing between different installations needs to get fixed. But I see only drawbacks in sharing plugins between installations. Why should one installation depends on the ohther? Is this an intended feature at all?

Comment 1

[Michael Krax]

Attachment: testcase

Testcase for scripting support

Comment 2

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

Could you perform these steps to help debug:

1, remove the files you copied in from RealPlayer/Netscape6 from the plugins dir of the 2.0b1 install
2, put about:config into the location bar
3, filter on "plugin.expose_full_path" and then toggle the preference to true by double clicking on it
4, put about:plugins into the location bar
5, report back the path where the the realplayer dll's are being read from, and if there the xpt files needed for scripting are also in that dir.

Thanks

Comment 3

[Michael Krax]

Firefox 2.0b1 reads from C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\Netscape6\

Firefox 1.5 reads from C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 1.5\plugins\

In both directorys all 5 files are present. 1.5 can script, 2.0b1 can't.

I deleted the files in the 1.5 plugins folder and restartet 1.5. The location changes to C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\Netscape6\ - and it looses the scripting support!

So this seems to be a general bug with the scripting support, if not all files are in the local plugins folder of an installation. 

I did not do the inital setup of this machine, so i can not tell if the 1.5 installer copied those files to the local directory or if someone from my TechOps team did that manually.

Comment 4

[Nick Thomas [:nthomas] (UTC+12)]

I see the same thing. Perhaps the plugin scanner doesn't look for xpt files outside of <appdir>\plugins ?

Comment 5

[Adam Guthrie]

Michael, can you get a range for when this regressed on trunk? Build are available on archive.mozilla.org/pub.

Comment 6

[Michael Krax]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Michael, can you get a range for when this regressed on trunk? Build are
> available on archive.mozilla.org/pub.

Did some tests and the outcome is a really surprising: it seems Real Player scripting has never worked properly when Firefox get's installed after the player.

The Real Player installer itself configures an existing Firefox installation properly, both the plugin and the scripting support is working. 

The Firefox installer does only configure to use the plugin fromn an existing Real Player installation, scripting support is broken when installing in that order.

Here the tests and installation order in detail. All on a fresh Windows 2000 virtual machine with the latest Real Player 10.5 and official EN-US Firefox releases.

1.) Firefox 1.0, 2.) Real Player = scripting supoort
1.) Firefox 1.5, 2.) Real Player = scripting support
1.) Firefox 2.0b1, 2.) Real Player = scripting support

1.) Real Player, 2.) Firefox 1.0 = no scripting support
1.) Real Player, 2.) Firefox 1.5 = no scripting support
1.) Real Player, 2.) Firefox 2.0b1 = no scripting support

Not sure why this never became a bigger issue before. Maybe installing player after browser is a common order, maybe clients don't care about real scripting that much or accept it as a typical "incompatibility" of Firefox. Maybe Real Player installs the scripting support implicit when running one of it's auto-updates? Who knows... or maybe i did something wrong when testing ;)

Anyway, if this is really a bug in the installer i vote for a blocking flag (disclosure: the product i currently programm for a living depends partly on Real Player scripting support).

Comment 7

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I deleted the files in the 1.5 plugins folder and restartet 1.5.
> The location changes to C:\Program Files\Real\RealPlayer\Netscape6\

This is done by kind plugin search function for major players.
Following are set to true as default.
> plugin.scan.Acrobat
> plugin.scan.Quicktime
> plugin.scan.SunJRE
> plugin.scan.WindowsMediaPlayer
> plugin.scan.plid.all

> - and it looses the scripting support!

DUP of Bug 286743

Comment 8

[Michael Krax]

(In reply to comment #7)
> DUP of Bug 286743

Oh, i reported that - i felt this looked familiar somehow *g* 

Do i understand correctly that the Real Player is not by default on this list for the "plugin search function" and that this could be fixed by adding it to this list?

Or do you mean that the option "plid.all" covers Real Player, but that this isn't working for the scripting support.