Mac Firefox and web start - doesn't.
Recently while trying to get Java Web Start
working on my MacBook Pro under Firefox, I came across a strange issue
with Firefox and its management of mime types and file associations.
Recently while trying to get Java Web Start
working on my MacBook Pro under Firefox, I came across a strange issue
with Firefox and its management of mime types and file associations.
The application I needed to test, of course, requires the latest Java runtime and the first thing I noticed is that Apple haven't officially released Java 6.0. A quick visit to the Apple Developer Site and a few minutes later I had Java SE 6.0 developer release installed. While I am impressed with how well Java performs on OSX, Apple should have Java 6.0 sorted and released by now. It'll probably be included in OSX Leopard which is due to for released in October of this year.
One
thing to mention is that the developer release installs along side Java
5.0 and provides a prefs panel that lets you adjust which runtime to
use. This gives you an easy way to test against Java 6.0 ( JRE v1.6 )
and then swap back to Java 5.0. Something like this under Windows and
Linux would be extremely handy.
Now that I had all the base requirements for the application setup, I started Firefox and gave the application a go. Everything looked fine "Java Starting.." window appeared, waiting, then nothing, no java console, nothing. At this point I jumped into Safari and tried it there, no problems - and it started fast too - much faster than Windows and Linux.
Firefox does seem to have its fair share of issues on OS X or I seem to be having a fair amount of bad luck, either way, I had to resolve the issue, since Firefox is my browser of choice and if Safari can do it, damn it, so can Firefox.
My first step was to check the file type associations in OS X itself, I located a JNLP file ( the extensions used by Java Web Start files ) and did a Get Info ( Cmd+I ) OS X had JNLP set to open with Java Web Start, and opening a JNLP file from the Finder worked perfectly. Running Firefox a few times it became apparent that somehow Firefox had a different file association to that of the OS, how this had happened I have no idea. So could I just wipe this out and start over? Firefox failed to let me choose an application to run against, I had open with Java Web Start or Save to Disk, and no option to Choose. Firefox preferences didn't help either, it has a section for file assocations but you can't add in any, you can only list and delete - what is the point of this I ask you?
In the end I found a very useful java web start guide on mindprod.com that pointed me to an great firefox extension called MIME Edit that allows you to setup mime type / app associations. Once I had MIME Edit installed I setup a mime to for "application/x-java-jnlp-file" and hey presto it all started working. I am sorry to say in this instance that Firefox failed in its file type associations when the host OS had everything laid out.
Hopefully we'll see some improvement in this area in Firefox 3.0.
The application I needed to test, of course, requires the latest Java runtime and the first thing I noticed is that Apple haven't officially released Java 6.0. A quick visit to the Apple Developer Site and a few minutes later I had Java SE 6.0 developer release installed. While I am impressed with how well Java performs on OSX, Apple should have Java 6.0 sorted and released by now. It'll probably be included in OSX Leopard which is due to for released in October of this year.
One
thing to mention is that the developer release installs along side Java
5.0 and provides a prefs panel that lets you adjust which runtime to
use. This gives you an easy way to test against Java 6.0 ( JRE v1.6 )
and then swap back to Java 5.0. Something like this under Windows and
Linux would be extremely handy.Now that I had all the base requirements for the application setup, I started Firefox and gave the application a go. Everything looked fine "Java Starting.." window appeared, waiting, then nothing, no java console, nothing. At this point I jumped into Safari and tried it there, no problems - and it started fast too - much faster than Windows and Linux.
Firefox does seem to have its fair share of issues on OS X or I seem to be having a fair amount of bad luck, either way, I had to resolve the issue, since Firefox is my browser of choice and if Safari can do it, damn it, so can Firefox.
My first step was to check the file type associations in OS X itself, I located a JNLP file ( the extensions used by Java Web Start files ) and did a Get Info ( Cmd+I ) OS X had JNLP set to open with Java Web Start, and opening a JNLP file from the Finder worked perfectly. Running Firefox a few times it became apparent that somehow Firefox had a different file association to that of the OS, how this had happened I have no idea. So could I just wipe this out and start over? Firefox failed to let me choose an application to run against, I had open with Java Web Start or Save to Disk, and no option to Choose. Firefox preferences didn't help either, it has a section for file assocations but you can't add in any, you can only list and delete - what is the point of this I ask you?
In the end I found a very useful java web start guide on mindprod.com that pointed me to an great firefox extension called MIME Edit that allows you to setup mime type / app associations. Once I had MIME Edit installed I setup a mime to for "application/x-java-jnlp-file" and hey presto it all started working. I am sorry to say in this instance that Firefox failed in its file type associations when the host OS had everything laid out.
Hopefully we'll see some improvement in this area in Firefox 3.0.
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