Forcing Firefox Plugins
By Xaxio
I love (VideoLan) VLC Media Player. I love Firefox. I love mp3s. I love oggs.
However, I do not love VLC’s browser plugin for listening to mp3s in Firefox. It gives no playback controls.
Quicktime Alternative, however, gives options up the arse and offers to do your dishes as well. The specific file that offers MP3 support is npqtplugin4.dll
Mine is at: C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins\npqtplugin4.dll
Installing VLC and its Firefox 3.0.5 plugin will set the audio/mpeg association to the VLC plugin in Firefox. Subsequently installing QuickTime alternative will make the plugin available to Firefox. The plugin will broadcast audio support for audio/mpeg and mp3. However, Firefox will refuse to give you the option to choose the new plugin!!!
I cannot find the place to force the new .dll file to be associated with the mime type. But there’s a way around it!!!
Choosing audio/mpeg and audio/x-mpeg and setting them to “always ask” will NOT make the browser ask you what to do with the content. It will, however, suddenly force the browser to use the new plugin dll.
I’m guessing it’s some sort of strange bug where Firefox refuses to list the plugin as an option in the “action” menu if there’s already a plugin that deals with that mime type. Oh well… workaround found!
:)
IE, DHTML, onclick, and anonymous functions
By Xaxio
So! I’m using the DOM to create dynamic popups, and I’ve just discovered that in order to create something that will work across all browsers without having to tell IE that an element is itself, you should us an anonymous function, i.e.:
myNewNode.onclick = function(){alert("Testing!");};
After adding the onclick property of the node (NOT via using setAttribute), you may *then* add the node as an appropriate child node to other elements on the page. Or, assuming that you’ve kept a reference to the node and didn’t simply leave it on the heap somewhere known only to JavaScript, you may add it later
IE7 and border-bottom bug
By Xaxio
I’ve just discovered that IE7 has issues with border-bottom. It doesn’t seem to want to always draw the bottom border of text placed within a <h4> for some reason. This is the solution:
display: inline-block; vertical-align: bottom;
Edit: You know what? I think I might be the first person to publish this one ^_^
Logitech Software Interferes with Thunderbird Updates
By Xaxio
Logitech’s software called “QuickCam”, in its latest version as of 07/28/2007, prevents Thunderbird from updating. You will need to right-click on the QuickCam icon in the system tray and click “Exit” in order to continue with the updates.



February 3rd, 2009