I apologize in advance for the frustrated tone of this post. See the bottom of my post for my list of plugins.
========= I am running Mozilla 1.1 on Win98. Two days ago I clicked to http://www.javahermit.org and tried to view a simple slideshow applet. Instead of the slideshow, the applet panel displayed the postage-stamp icon that is the prompt to get a new plugin -- it did NOT tell me what that plugin was. This surprised me because I am running Java, and other applets run just fine. So I went to the Netscape site and downloaded the plugin that Netscape said I needed. It took a hour and a half at 58K. It didn't say what the plugin was. It gave me no download time message for the file, nor did it tell me how big the plugin was. At the end of the process, I get a surprise "Java Web Services" icon on my desktop. I don't want 'surprise' icons on my desktop. What are these "Java Web Services" and why wasn't I prompted to install the 'service' anywhere else but as a plugin to Mozilla? I suppose I installed the plugin correctly. The installer said that I did, but here's my first question: How do you tell with Mozilla? I thought Netscape documentation was bad; but Mozilla's online docs are just awful. Is there any good documentation on the web, that can help me perform some fairly simple user-type troubleshooting on Mozilla for myself, so I don't have to post these frustrated, embarrassing messages to Usenet newsgroups? So I run Mozilla again. I get a serious error: Something about dhhelp doing something very bad and being shut down, but the message was not helpful. Mozilla froze and crashed and had to be terminated from the CTL-ALT-DEL Window. I upgrade Mozilla to 1.1. It still happens. I uninstall whatever the Hell the "Java Web Services" thing is. I run it again. Mozilla crashes for the third time. dhhelp is apparently still here on my system someplace, even though I can't find it. So here's where I am: If I go to a website that runs an applet; Mozilla will crash. ========= Questions ======== How do I turn JavaScript and Java on or off in Mozilla? There isn't any heading or checkbox I can find in the "Preferences" window, and the online documentation provides NO guidance of any kind. Please tell me that there at least is a safe config file somewhere that i can edit. How do I install a Java plugin into Mozilla? Can I install a new Java 1.4 plugin into Mozilla if I already have a java plug in installed? Does it matter? Are there conflicts? There aren't any notes, procedures or index entries in the online documentation. How do I tell if a plug-in has installed itself into Mozilla correctly? When I go to the "Help:Plug In info" menu entry, I get a list of plug-ins. Why aren't there buttons on that page that let me easily uninstall plugins I might not want, or perhaps search for upgrades to the plugins that display there? How do I uninstall a screwed-up plugin from Mozilla? There aren't any notes, procedures or index entries in the online documentation. How do I tell whether a plugin is the right one for Mozilla, as opposed to Netscape 4 or 6 or 7? The Netscape site does not seem to list Mozilla as a supported web browser, yet it pulls up lots of plugins that it says are appropriate for my Mozilla browser. How do I know that the Netscape site isn't screwing me up big-time? I would be able to tell these things, if I could find a list of plugins that work specifically with Mozilla. I can't find a list like that in the Mozilla documentation (where it belongs), or on the web anywhere. Why isn't any of this obvious stuff documented? I would say that the Mozilla folks aren't ready, even for beta-user primetime anything without some decent documentation that answers simple questions like these. ... and I don't know that most users would want to risk their systems and spend eight hours just trying to run a simple Java Applet, when some reasonable documentation would clear up problems for them in fifteen minutes or so. Is there a place on the web with better Mozilla docs, notes, troubleshooting procedures and reference materials than the Mozilla site (which is useless)? Finally: What java plug-in support do I need to run a slideshow applet that might (or might not) make calls to a Java 1.2/3/4 plug-in? How do I install it; and how do I tell if I installed it correctly; and how do I fix it if it comes up broken? kly Here is my list of plugins showing from the 'about plugins' display: npnul32.dll -- Mozilla NPJava11.dll Java Plug-in 1.4.0_01 for Netscape Navigator NPJava12.dll Java Plug-in 1.4.0_01 for Netscape Navigator NPJava13.dll Java Plug-in 1.4.0_01 for Netscape Navigator NPJava32.dll Java Plug-in 1.4.0_01 for Netscape Navigator NPJPI140_01.dll Java Plug-in 1.4.0_01 for Netscape Navigator NPOJI610.dll Java Plug-in 1.4.0_01 for Netscape Navigator npswf32.dll Shockwave Flash 4.0 r28 nppdf32.dll Netscape Navigator Plug-in for Adobe Acrobat v4.05
