R help - Apr 2005 - R-2.1.0 search engine works with mozilla browser but not firefox

I'm running R-2.1.0 on a Linux box and found that the HTML search engine
help would not work with Firefox 1.0.3 but would work with Mozilla
1.7.7.  I have Java Runtime Environment 1.5.0_02 installed.  With
Firefox, when I launch help.start() and click to the search engine, it
brings up the first page with "Applet SearchEngine started" in the
status bar, but clicking on one of the contents entries or trying to
search for a term does nothing.

Scott Waichler
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
scott.waichler at pnl.gov

It works with Firefox 1.0.3 for me on Fedora Core 3.

Please consult the appropriate manual as linked from the search page: this 
is a configuration issue local to you.  One irritating part of FC3's 
updates is that they do not (at least for me) copy the plugins across, so 
I had manually to fix up my Firefox 1.0.3 update yesterday.  Sounds like 
your plugin is not set up correctly.

On Fri, 29 Apr 2005, Waichler, Scott R wrote:
> I'm running R-2.1.0 on a Linux box and found that the HTML search
engine
> help would not work with Firefox 1.0.3 but would work with Mozilla
> 1.7.7.  I have Java Runtime Environment 1.5.0_02 installed.  With
> Firefox, when I launch help.start() and click to the search engine, it
> brings up the first page with "Applet SearchEngine started" in
the
> status bar, but clicking on one of the contents entries or trying to
> search for a term does nothing.
-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

> > I'm running R-2.1.0 on a Linux box and found that the HTML search 
> > engine help would not work with Firefox 1.0.3 but would work with 
> > Mozilla 1.7.7.  I have Java Runtime Environment 1.5.0_02 
> installed.  
> > With Firefox, when I launch help.start() and click to the search 
> > engine, it brings up the first page with "Applet 
> SearchEngine started" 
> > in the status bar, but clicking on one of the contents entries or 
> > trying to search for a term does nothing.
> It works with Firefox 1.0.3 for me on Fedora Core 3.
> 
> Please consult the appropriate manual as linked from the 
> search page: this is a configuration issue local to you.  One 
> irritating part of FC3's updates is that they do not (at 
> least for me) copy the plugins across, so I had manually to 
> fix up my Firefox 1.0.3 update yesterday.  Sounds like your 
> plugin is not set up correctly.
I followed the advice posted at
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/java.html#Linux to install the JRE
plugin correctly:

"If you installed the JRE 5.0 RPM, this plugin is
/usr/java/j2re1.5.0/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so - and to
install it for Mozilla (including Mozilla Firefox), do the following:

    * Open a terminal
    * Change to your Mozilla (or Mozilla Firefox) plugins directory
    * Issue the following command: ln -s
/usr/java/j2re1.5.0/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

Important! If you install your JRE in a different way (self extracting
package, debian package, etc), libjavaplugin_oji.so will quite likely be
in a different location. Do not just blindly use the command listed
above!" 

All of this checked out for me, and Firefox still won't work with R's
search engine.  Yes, I understand this isn't an R issue per se, but I
don't know where to turn. . .

Scott Waichler