This was bothering me for some time- since the introduction of Firebird 0.7...
The Macromedia flash plugin is definitely NOT working with the XFT builds of Firebird for Linux. The reason should be the fonts that are installed by the macromedia flash installler (no problem with the non-XFT builds, but the normal fonts in the non-XFT builds display as sh%t...).
I tried various solutions, and finally found a working one- at least to the day Macromedia updates their Flash player browser plugin...
Most normal Linux distros also feature a full Mozilla installation, which uses a third party flash plugin (from sourceforge). this plugin is named libmozswfdec.so and it's typically placed in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ (if not there, I believe you can spot it...).
Just remove the official macromedia plugin for Flash, and make a symlink to the above mentioned file to the Firebird /plugins directory (you can use commandline, or simply Midnight Commander- much easier...). Now Flash should work like a champ with Firebird. This plugin uses system fonts and not the ones installed by the Macromedia plugin, and so it does not have issues with XFT. It may sound trivial, but it took me quite some time to figure it...
Also, some ppl reported that even the non-XFT builds are working slow with the Macromedia plugin, I can say that this problem does not exist with the third party Mozzy plugin...
Finally, if you use Firebird nightlies I strongly suggest daihard's optimized build (for P3/4) from 29/10, which just works perfectly in my Mandrake 9.2, Aebrahim's build does not work at all (fails to start, claiming an error in the last lines of the load script which to my knowledge is pretty irrelevant- BAD build). You can find all those special builds at www.mozilazine.org site.
The Macromedia flash plugin is definitely NOT working with the XFT builds of Firebird for Linux. The reason should be the fonts that are installed by the macromedia flash installler (no problem with the non-XFT builds, but the normal fonts in the non-XFT builds display as sh%t...).
I tried various solutions, and finally found a working one- at least to the day Macromedia updates their Flash player browser plugin...
Most normal Linux distros also feature a full Mozilla installation, which uses a third party flash plugin (from sourceforge). this plugin is named libmozswfdec.so and it's typically placed in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ (if not there, I believe you can spot it...).
Just remove the official macromedia plugin for Flash, and make a symlink to the above mentioned file to the Firebird /plugins directory (you can use commandline, or simply Midnight Commander- much easier...). Now Flash should work like a champ with Firebird. This plugin uses system fonts and not the ones installed by the Macromedia plugin, and so it does not have issues with XFT. It may sound trivial, but it took me quite some time to figure it...
Also, some ppl reported that even the non-XFT builds are working slow with the Macromedia plugin, I can say that this problem does not exist with the third party Mozzy plugin...
Finally, if you use Firebird nightlies I strongly suggest daihard's optimized build (for P3/4) from 29/10, which just works perfectly in my Mandrake 9.2, Aebrahim's build does not work at all (fails to start, claiming an error in the last lines of the load script which to my knowledge is pretty irrelevant- BAD build). You can find all those special builds at www.mozilazine.org site.
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