AUS: Update XML File Malformed (200) Firefox Update Error

Recently one my blog reader was angry that I posted something related to Microsoft Windows ;). Why shouldn't I write about that it?. There whole lot of free software that runs on it, programming languages, Office tools, editors you name it. Mozilla Firefox is perhaps the most common one. This is post discusses this odd Firefox error message which is triggered when the browser try to check for latest updates.

This AUS Update XML File Malformed 200 error traps many issues, the simplest being unable to access the Internet. So, most of the time you can safely ignore this warning.

Test Case

1. File>Work Offline


2. Help>Check for Updates

Gnu/Linux users running firefox installed from the distribution package would find that Check for Updates feature is disabled.

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Install Adobe Flash Player For Linux

Here is quick steps to install Flash Player 9 plugin for firefox on Gnu/Linux. Just uncompress and run the install script, no root level permissions needed for this.


[arky@lab Desktop]$ tar zxvf install_flash_player_9_linux.tar.gz -C /tmp
install_flash_player_9_linux/
install_flash_player_9_linux/flashplayer-installer
install_flash_player_9_linux/libflashplayer.so

[arky@lab ~]$ ls /tmp/install_flash_player_9_linux/
flashplayer-installer libflashplayer.so

[arky@lab ~]$ /tmp/install_flash_player_9_linux/flashplayer-installer

Copyright(C) 2002-2006 Adobe Macromedia Software LLC. All rights reserved.

Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux

Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed on this machine.

You are running the Adobe Flash Player installer as a non-root user.
Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed in your home directory.

Support is available at http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/

To install Adobe Flash Player 9 now, press ENTER.

To cancel the installation at any time, press Control-C.



NOTE: Please exit any browsers you may have running.

Press ENTER to continue...





----------- Install Action Summary -----------

Adobe Flash Player 9 will be installed in the following directory:

Mozilla installation directory = /home/arky/.mozilla

Proceed with the installation? (y/n/q): y

NOTE: Please ask your administrator to remove the xpti.dat from the
components directory of the Mozilla or Netscape browser.


Installation complete.


[arky@lab ~]$



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Firefox Type Ahead Find for power surfing

This is another darling feature of firefox power users. The Type ahead find feature will find text link on the page much like the line browser Elinks search "/" mode. You can see this firefox type ahead find in action in the beginning of this screencast.

In newer versions of firefox browser a new search bar is placed at the bottom the screen when in search mode, this search bar is not loved by all (that includes me). But don't be put off by my preferences, this typeahead find feature will help you find and follow the weblinks thereby increasing your surfing speed.

Enable Type Ahead Find in Firefox/Iceweasel

John mentions the steps for enabling the type ahead find feature on his technipages blog.

1. Type about:config in the address bar and press ENTER.



2. Locate and double-click the entry for
   accessibility.typeaheadfind



3. Set it to true to enable this feature.

Happy Surfing!!

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Advanced Ad-blocking in Firefox

Every browser has some kind of adblocking facility built into it, Firefox web browser is no exception. But the browsers (or computers itself) are not smart enough to recognise advertisements from content.

The solution has always been using community contributed filters expressed in regex(Regular Expressions) that match the ad’s.

Adblock Plus is better extension based on older Adblock content filtering plug-in for the Mozilla and Firebird browsers.

Install Adblock Plus 0.7.1.1

Adblock Filterset.G Updater is the Firefox extension that automatically updates “Filterset.G.”: http://www.pierceive.com/filtersetg/ . It works with both older Adblock or Adblock Plus extensions.

Install Adblock Filterset.G Updater

The user can also write personal filters that will persist between filterset upgrades. Also, Adblock Plus has feature to use other EasyList, RU AdList filtersets.

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Running WATiR On gnu/Debian Linux

Last time I had a dekko at WATiR (Web Application Testing in Ruby) it worked only on Internet Explorer (IE), I didn't think that it was worth an effort to run it on IE under Wine on gnu/Linux.

Now WATiR supports both Firefox and Safari on gnu/Linux and Mac. I was able to install the FireWATiR tool which has a ruby gem and Firefox JSSH(JSSh - a TCP/IP JavaScript Shell Server for Mozilla) plugin on Debian/Sid running Iceweasel (2.0.0.11-1)/Ruby(4.1)/Gems(1.0.1-4) with no problems.

If you are looking for a simple open-source library for automating web browsers on gnu/Debian Linux, you don't have to look any further.

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Iceweasel Display Problem

I wasn't able to recreate this problem reported long back on fsf-ap mailing-list. However setting the Nglayout.initialpaint.delay value too high seems to give similar results. Can anyone show some insight into this problem.

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NextPlease! An Essential FF/Iceweasel plugin

Update(Sep 21, 2008) : As of now Nextplease! plugin doesn't work with Firefox 3

Here is plugin that I can't do without.

NextPlease! is a highly configurable extension that allows you to jump to next and previous links on search results pages, like Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon, and many other sites. NextPlease! can be triggered via keyboard shortcuts, toolbar...

The older version of this plugin used to work fine with the Next/Previous links were image links but simple simple hypertext links were an issue. In the screenshot of the NextPlease! menu you can see it that only image links can assigned. The newer versions of plugin allows the use of simple link phrases too.

The plugin comes along with a comprehensive documentation too. Usually firefox plugins don't have great documentation, but this one does!!!. Overall this plugin is neat and makes surfs a hundred of more page listings easy.

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