asx files launching blank pages in version 1.5

[datawhat]

The issue is whenever you click a link to any file type associated woth the WMP plugin, if you have the plugin. The issue is not caused by how Firefox handles the plugin, but by how the plugin responds to being called by the browser for a link to a file instead of for an embedded file.

I guess the reason I'm seeing it that way was because it never used to happen before Firefox version 1.5. In the older versions, WMP launched just fine, but since 1.5 it has this blank-page hiccup.

Regardless of whether it is happening by how Firefox handles the plugin, or by how the plugin responds to being called by the browser, the action still seems to be the responsibility of Firefox's plugin (not WMP, not the people who have coded the different websites, etc).

Is this a plugin that Firefox developed for 1.5? If so (in my opinion) it causes an unneccesary (and confusing) step and should be changed.

Again, the Earth will still continue to revolve if this remains in place, but it is still a frustrating bug in a browser that is still the best browser out there.

[Vectorspace]

Plugins are not made by Firefox, they are made by whoever made the program that the plugin links to.

I.e. Adobe made the Adobe Reader plugin
Sun made the Java plugin
Microsoft made the WMP plugin

A plugin is nothing more than an interface that allows one program to load inside another. The WMP plugin is about 6 years old now, and apart from security fixes has not had a functionality update in all that time.

And this behaviour should have been the same in FF versions before 1.5 - if you have a plugin for a given file type, it would load a link to such a file internally using the plugin instead of offering a download prompt unless, you had changed the download action setting.

[datawhat]

And this behaviour should have been the same in FF versions before 1.5 - if you have a plugin for a given file type, it would load a link to such a file internally using the plugin instead of offering a download prompt unless, you had changed the download action setting.

Hmmm...well, there was definitely an unexpected change when version 1.5 was released.

I remember this vividly because I was part of a team developing a website that could play 30 second samples, and we were very adamant about making it work correctly in Firefox. Everything was going swimmingly until early December when all of the sudden with the newest update, all of our pages would turn white and disappear when we clicked on the "play sample" link. We tried a million different code-arounds but in the end could not come up with a solution, so we had to launch it as is (and got some people complaining that we had built the page "optimized for IE" which was a real drag).

It doesn't do it in Opera or IE. If Microsoft has not changed the functionality of their plugin code as you say, that leads me to believe that it must be some way in which the more recent versions of Firefox are calling that plugin, or initializing that plugin...or something! Anything!

[old FatJohn]

Maybe you guys should introduce your case on the Web Development / Standards Evangelism forum?

[Vectorspace]

The setup of those settings was changed in Firefox 1.5. Its possible that in 1.0.x you had the settings changed so thet they would not open with the plugin, and then when you upgraded to 1.5 they were reset.

[dtrenz]

that still doesn't explain why other browsers seem to have no problem with the plug-in.

that's why it seems like the onus is on Firefox.

[old FatJohn]

Other browsers are completely unrelated as they use completely different plugins!

[icannotloginforsomereason]

There is an issue that occurs when Firefox tries to launch ASX audio samples using the default Windows Media plug-in. Firefox appears to "white-out" the page you were on as it launches the audio file.

This appears to be an issue with how Firefox handles the Windows Media Player plug-in with ASX files, which first surfaced in the release of Firefox 1.5. I hope that this issue will be resolved someday, but until it is, here is a fix.

The issue is whenever you click a link to any file type associated woth the WMP plugin, if you have the plugin. The issue is not caused by how Firefox handles the plugin, but by how the plugin responds to being called by the browser for a link to a file instead of for an embedded file.

so is there a solution? is there a way to form the asx file that would work?

[Guest]

I upgraded to 1.5.0.4, and I performed all the steps according to datawhat. However, I still get the blank page.

[dtrenz]

Other browsers are completely unrelated as they use completely different plugins!

Actually, I believe they all use the same plug-ins.

As vectorspace said above, Firefox does not make the WMA Plug-in, Microsoft does.

[old FatJohn]

It maybe a 'port' of the MSIE WMA plugin but it's still a different plugin. And there are other plugins besides WMA. And if you find that some MS gadget works fine with some other MS apparatus but not with open source apps, you really shouldn't be too surprised...

[Guest]

Opera, Netscape, Mozilla/Firefox all use the same plugin. The difference is Mozilla's security check which prevents web content from loading local content:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=284963#c8

[Guest]

easiest fix: <a href="whatever.asx" TARGET="NEW_WINDOW">filename</a>

[steviex]

Guest... the last post to this thread was over two years ago, and they are referring to an obsolete version of Firefox.

I don't think any of the contributors are watching this thread. Therefore, I am locking it.