Firefox 3
If you have updated your web browser to the latest version of Firefox 3, you might not have noticed anything odd. But you might have a hard time finding the podcast player on this (and many other) websites.
The reason is that for some unknown reason the Podpress plugin that generates the player on many WordPress-based podcast blogs, doesn’t show up if you are using FF3.
The people at Podpress say it’s a Firefox issue, that FF3 doesn’t allow FLASH players to run without some obscure setting made to allow it. (I haven’t found that setting.)
Yet, FF3 plays all sorts of FLASH media all without any special tricks. If you’ve watched YouTube with it, you’ve used FLASH.
Apparently, it’s not that it uses FLASH, but how it does it. I’m hoping that a new version of the plugin will fix the problem. There is supposed to be one coming out shortly.
I thought, at first, that there was something wrong with my blog and had reinstalled PodPress completely, so it caught me off guard too. I finally tried IE7 and the player was back, so I started asking questions at the Mighty Seek site and found a terse post placing the blame on FF3.
The podcasts still play, if you want to hear them. Clicking the little MP3 button will open them with your default MP3 player application. The links to download still work as well, so if you use FF3, don’t worry, it’s just a little less convenient to play the shows.
Of course, if you don’t use FF3, you’ll never notice anything wrong.
Al Gritzmacher said,
July 17, 2008 at 2:18 am
I’m starting to think the issue with the PodPress plugin isn’t Firefox 3 at all, but perhaps something in WordPress.
I installed WordPress 2.6 on my other blog today and noticed the in the new theme previews, the PodPress plugin worked!
I thought maybe it was just a certain theme, so I tried the theme that worked in preview mode, but no luck. But there is something fishy going on with the WordPress-PodPress-Firefox3 combo.
Al Gritzmacher said,
October 29, 2008 at 1:02 pm
More information I found out about this issue: it’s not Podpress. It’s not WordPress. It’s not even Firefox 3′s fault, it’s AdBlock that is doing it.
Disabling AdBlock from it’s own menu doesn’t fix it, but if you disable AdBlock in the add-ons part of Firefox, it starts working again.
I’d hate to give up AdBlock, it’s such a useful tool, but at least I know to look for updates for it. Maybe it will get fixed in the future.
Mark DeNio said,
December 21, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Thanks for posting this! I JUST started having this problem in the last couple days, presumably since I downloaded 3.05 and also started messing with 3.1b2.
I just disabled Adblock and now Firefox works again! I’m still trying to find how to whitelist my player because seeing “block” on my own site is annoying.
MANY thanks, Al!
DocWu said,
December 21, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Further update: I really liked Adblock. I didn’t want to remove it or even disable it, because it did such a good job of removing obnoxious ads on various sites.
I’ve found a solution where I can have my cake and eat it too: Adblock Plus. It doesn’t break the Podpress player and it does everything the old Adblock did.
In fact, it’s better. The original Adblock you needed to train. I was always adding sites to block. Adblock Plus uses a subscription to a list of ad sites to keep updated. I’ve not needed to add a thing. Just install the plugin, subscribe to the sites list (just a matter of clicking a check box to indicate which one to use.) and enjoy. You can uninstall the old Adblock.
Go to Tools>Addons in your Firefox menu. Click the Get Add-Ons Tab and type in Adblock Plus to find and install.