PCR's notepad » Firefox

Flash 10.1 final for portable browsers

David Dernoncourt — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:39:33 +0000

Not so long ago I posted links to portable versions of Flash 10.1 RC6 and RC7. I thought I’d make a separate post for the final thing. So here they are, the famous NPSWF32.dll and flashplayer.xpt files for Flash 10.1 final. In case you missed the posts about this, here is a very concise summary of where to place those files for the different portable browsers:

Firefox Portable: Data/plugins
Opera USB: program/plugins
Iron Portable: Iron/plugins
Chrome Portable: get Iron you freak! :p

Note that this is not an official release from Adobe, it’s a custom, “home-made” package.
Also, note that Flash is not 100% portable: some sites will leave Local Shared Objects (LSO) on the computer where you use it. To remove them, you can either use the BetterPrivacy Firefox extension or Adobe’s Global Storage Settings panel (to disable future storing of LSOs) and Adobe’s Website Storage Settings panel (to delete already stored LSOs).

Flash 10.1 final for portable browsers

If you don’t want to grab 7-Zip portable, here are the same Flash files but in a ZIP archive.

As requested in a comment, here are the SHA 512 checksums:
SHA512 of file: NPSWF32.dll
dcdf4dccb5359a36 607a85c3034ef6f0 7a3597c0af00d42f bebee5c12af534fa
39ff83f8a3bc9f15 802cb3d18a138d44 41292b8f9032e758 73ef55d530ea1400

SHA512 of file: flashplayer.xpt
494146bb31cf0e11 5a6e1c632a8ed560 8046f5a8b2bbc900 832befb07b8f1425
81483c222067e440 5fc2755b5acf722d 576ac04b2b6d9f79 6e5a872fd5c7ddc9

How to install Flash Player on Firefox Portable or Opera-USB

David Dernoncourt — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:54:12 +0000

For a shorter/faster version lacking details, see the Quick Guide at the bottom of this post.

Firefox Portable, published by PortableApps.com, is a version of Firefox specially designed to be run from the folder where it is, without requiring an installation. This means that it can be used without administrative privileges and from a removable media like a USB key. So in More tips to freedom on a restricted computer environment I presented it as the way to install Firefox on a restricted computer. Opera-USB is the equivalent thing for Opera (except that since Opera isn’t free software it wasn’t made portable by PortableApps).
Leaving aside the connection configuration issues that were dealt with in the above-mentioned post, there is another problem with restricted computers: you can’t install plugins like Flash or Java. I didn’t study the Java case yet. But as for Flash, Firefox will use the installed Flash player if: 1. there is one and 2. the one installed is the generic version (i.e., multibrowser) and not the MSIE-only version. Which means that on a classic restricted computer happily limited to MSIE 6, Firefox Portable will most likely not be able to use the installed Flash player.
I found 2 ways to solve this problem:

Solution 1: the XPI

Adobe published a special version for Firefox, which is supposed to install like any other extension (aka now add-on). It turns out that the XPI fails to install. But, you can download it manually (for this you’ll need to right-click the following link and choose “save as”: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi), unpack it (with any archiver supporting zip, i.e. you can do it with Windows if you change the file extension from .xpi to .zip), grab flashplayer.xpt and NPSWF32.dll and place them into the plug-in folder of Firefox Portable (in Data/plugins). Restart Firefox and voilà. For Opera-USB, the plug-in folder is program/plugins.
This method works and is quick and easy. The only problem is: Adobe doesn’t seem to update their XPI as often as they update the executable installer. This results in an outdated and thus insecure plug-in. As I’m writing, the version of the XPI is 10.0.32.18 (17 July 2009) while the current version is 10.0.45.2.

Solution 2: hacking the exe

Thanks to an article on eHow, I found this promising software called Universal Extractor (NB: it exists in a portable version). This free program, released under the GNU GPL v2, was designed to extract files from any type of archive or installer. It was suggested on eHow to use it to manually unpack the Flash installer, then grab the files as mentioned above about the XPI. Thus I downloaded the generic installer here (direct link), but when I tried to extract it with Universal Extractor it failed. I tried my luck with a 10.1 release candidate (RC4) from Adobe Labs, but it was not much better (it succeeding in extracting the files, but they all had strange names thus I couldn’t find the proper files, plus I thought they might be damaged anyway).
So, this leaves me with only two choices: grab the files from my home installation or grab the files from a site I consider safe to trust. For now I chose the second option. I came across a blog hosted by Opera Community, Tamil. They posted an up-to-date version of NPSWF32.dll. For Opera-USB, this is enough. For Firefox Portable, use this file along with flashplayer.xpt from the XPI. Restart your browser, then check your Flash installation.

Edit: at my home Flash installation, the Flash files (version 10.0.45.2) from my Opera plugins folder have the following MD5 checksums:
NPSWF32.dll: f8efdcfc440a420d6c1ecd245ab20207 (size: 3884312 bytes)
flashplayer.xpt: a81fd3b03b8c6d6e5a14298110718d3f (size: 856 bytes)
I compared NPSWF32.dll’s checksum to the one at Tamil’s, it’s the same.

Sources and versions

While dealing with this $#!t I found the following more or less useful pages

Install Flash Plugin Manually in Firefox on Vista on How-To Geek
How to Install Flash Player on Firefox Portable on eHow.com
Flash version checker on Adobe.com: I already posted about it, but it’s so useful that it never hurts to remind it sometimes.
Tamil – How to install flash player without administrator privilege for Opera?
Hash functions on FileFormat.info: this page lets you calculate the most common checksums for a string or a file (md2, md4, md5, sha1, sha256, sha512…)

I did those things to Firefox Portable 3.6.3 and Opera@USB 10.53 on Windows XP SP2. The Flash versions I tried were 10.0.32.18, 10.0.45.2 and 10.1rc4. No registry key was hurt in the process, no CPU burnt and no hard drive failed despite the massive use of swap due to the ludicrous 512 MiB of installed RAM.

Quick guide (updated for Flash 10.1)

download NPSWF32.dll and flashplayer.xpt
save those files in Data/plugins (Firefox) or program/plugins (Opera)
restart your browser, and optionally check your installation.

Update (June 1): you can also grab Flash 10.1 RC6 there.
Update (June 12): you can grab Flash 10.1 final here.

extensions.checkCompatibility broken?

David Dernoncourt — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:15:02 +0000

Around November 11 (2009), extensions.checkCompatibility ceased working in the Firefox nightlies. This is due to a “feature” request, bug 521905, being implemented. Now extensions.checkCompatibility has been replaced by extensions.checkCompatibility.[version]. So for Namoroka it would be extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6b. It didn’t occur to the developers that maybe it would have been a good idea to leave a catchall name… Did they hire a moron from Microsoft?

Upgrading Firefox 3.5b4 to something closer to 3.5 final

David Dernoncourt — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:59:48 +0000

After using Firefox 3.0 for a while, I decided to try 3.1b3 hoping there would be some more performance improvements. It globally felt a bit better than 3.0, but then auto-update suggested that I install 3.5b4. I guessed it was the weirdly numbered following beta version, so I chose to install it. But it broke some really important things, most notably the session saving feature from Tab Mix Plus, and the function to re-open a recently (and most often, “accidentally”) closed tab (CTRL+SHIFT+T), which left me very annoyed and impaired. I didn’t want to take the risk to downgrade and potentially lose my profile data (not supposed to be backwards compatible as far as I know). So I had no choice but to move to a later nightly. Which led me to another problem: Mozilla’s Firefox nightly FTP folder looks like a mess to a newbie like me. Sorting it by date and time could have helped a bit, but I preferred to run a desperate search which let me find out that Firefox 3.5 is aka “Shiretoko” and aka branch 1.9.1. Hurray, here are branch 1.9.1 FTP folders:

One last problem (with again the solution): most extensions don’t officially support 3.5. To bypass the highly annoying failed compatibility check, go to about:config and set extensions.checkCompatibility to false. You will still see the compatibility check process upon installing a new version, but the incompatible extensions won’t get deactivated.

PS: “for informational purpose only”, my list of enabled extensions as of today on Firefox 3.5 Shiretoko updated today 23 May 2009:
* Adblock Plus 1.0.2
* Add N Edit Cookies 0.2.1.3
* CacheViewer 0.5b4
* CustomizeGoogle 0.76
* Firebug 1.3.3
* Gmail Notifier 0.6.3.11
* Greasemonkey 0.8.20090123.1
* Java Console 6.0.11
* Java Quick Starter 1.0
* MIME Edit 0.60
* Modify Headers 0.6.6
* MR Tech Toolkit 6.0.3.3
* NoScript 1.9.2.8
* ReloadEvery 3.0.0
* Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7.3
* Tamper Data 10.1.0
* User Agent Switcher 0.6.11
* Web Developer 1.1.6
* worksafer 0.3
* Yes popups 0.9.8b
They all seem to work fine.

Fixing the “Port Restricted for Security Reasons” error in Firefox

David Dernoncourt — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:26:22 +0000

Port Restricted for Security Reasons
This address uses a network port which is normally used for purposes other than Web browsing. Firefox has canceled the request for your protection.

This is an error I met for the first time earlier today in Firefox. I thought wow, they’re really starting to pick noob-friendly default settings now. But well, as usual they provide us with a way to customize the browser to our need: the responsible settings for this are network.security.ports.banned and network.security.ports.banned.override.

network.security.ports.banned contains a list of ports that will be added to the default (hard-coded) banned list. If the port you wanted to reach is in this variable, remove it (restarting the browser may be necessary for the setting to apply). Ports are listed separated by commas.
network.security.ports.banned.override contains a list of ports that will be removed from the default (hard-coded) banned list. If the port you wanted to reach is not in network.security.ports.banned, you’ll need to add it here.

To finish my story, the port I wanted to access (8118) was added to the banned list most likely by the TorButton extension.

More details:
network.security.ports.banned on MozillaZine
network.security.ports.banned.override on MozillaZine
Mozilla Port Blocking

How to disable the backspace keyboard shortcut in Firefox

David Dernoncourt — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:19:00 +0000

At the time of 2 buttons mice and untabbed browser, the backspace shortcut for going backwards in the browsing history was a great feature. Nowadays, though, most mice feature at least a back and a forward button, and most browsers feature tab browsing. Thus:
1. The backspace shortcut is useless.
2. The backspace shortcut can be a nuisance when switching from a form to another in different tabs, because if you press it while having forgotten to select a field, you go back to before the form, thus losing what you typed in there, sometimes.

Hopefully, there is an easy way to disable this backspace keyboard shortcut in Firefox:
1. Go to about:config
2. Search for the setting called browser.backspace_action
3. Its default value is 0. Change it to 2.
4. Tada! It’s done.

Credits to this Q/A website, which unfortunately rated good a “bad” solution (the answer saying it’s impossible…), and rated bad the good solution…

Despite 100 Million IE 7 Installs, Microsoft’s Browser Still Loses Ground

David Dernoncourt — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:47:00 +0000

Good news for web developpers, according to Net Applications, Internet Explorer accounted for 79.6% of all browsers used in December 2006, a drop from the 80.6% during the previous month. Firefox’s use, meanwhile, measured 14% in December, up from 13.5% in November. Also gaining ground in the last month of 2006 was Apple’s Safari, which climbed to 4.2% from 4%, and Opera, which saw its share increase from 0.7% to 0.9%.

MS Linux and MS Firefox

David Dernoncourt — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 06:19:00 +0000

Check out these new Micro$oft products :
- Firefox 2007
- MS Linux (well, not so new…)

Bring killed tabs back from the dead (Firefox 2.0)

David Dernoncourt — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:13:00 +0000

If you accidentally close a tab you can bring it back from the netherworld by hitting Shift+Cmd+T (on a Mac) or Shift+Ctrl+T (on Windows)…

Well, that’s all folks.

Firefox 2 is out !

David Dernoncourt — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:52:00 +0000

Firefox 2 was released today. You can download it on Mozilla.com