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FireBible Problems

By
Brian
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0

Unfortunately there have been a couple of issues rendering FireBible defunct on recent versions of Firefox.

  1. First, there was a security vulnerability in Java 7 update 6 and below. This lead to these versions of Java being disabled; if you updated your Java installation, it would be enabled again, but loading text in FireBible fails with

    org.xml.sax.SAXException: Could not compile stylesheet javax.xml.transform.TransformerConfigurationException: Could not compile stylesheet at org.crosswire.common.xml.TransformingSAXEventProvider.provideSAXEvents(TransformingSAXEventProvider.java:174) at org.crosswire.common.xml.XMLUtil.writeToString(XMLUtil.java:85) at …

    I’m not too sure if this was caused by changes in Java 7 update 7 (or later) or if it was the switch to JAXP 1.4.6 in Java 7 update 4 – nevertheless, you are now forced to use a version of Java in which the above error occurs.

  2. The second issue is a change in Firefox version 16 (16.0.1 is now current) where the “java” global variable was removed. I was warned by the addons team in advance, but failed to make changes in time (however, we’d still be stymied by the above problem).

The good news is that I do know how to solve both problems, but am currently looking for a better solution for the first of these. I’ll try to release a fix ASAP.

This extension has always been a technical challenge, which is fun most of the time, but the battle with Java in the browser has been a PITA – it still won’t work with IcedTea due to more permission problems. I’m wondering if I should go native instead and switch from JSword to Sword, the crossover will be quite expensive in terms of time and effort, but will probably add long term stability to FireBible. A Java installation (specifically, the Oracle one) would no longer be required and we wouldn’t be plagued by these incessant security issues.

FireBible 1.3 Released

By
Brian
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0

I released FireBible 1.3 last weekend, with the following key fixes. If you already have FireBible installed, you can check for updates, or head on to the FireBible page to get it.

Changes in 1.3:

  • Will automatically download and install JSword.
  • Can automatically install books if none found.
  • You can now type book names first in Ubiquity (don’t need to start with ‘sword’).
  • Fixed Ubiquity command installation issues.
  • Fixed issue with Sun’s Java 7 browser plugin.
  • Raised compatibility to work with more recent Firefox versions.

For those of you having issues getting Ubiquity to work with recent Firefox releases, please download this file and open it (File > Open File…) using Firefox. This is a version of Ubiquity being maintained by satyr.

Next up:

  • Getting FireBible working with OpenJDK / IcedTea browser plugin (still only works with Sun’s VM and plugin) but OpenJDK and IcedTea compatibility seems more possible than GCJ support.
  • Integration of a newer version of JSword with av11n support (which is still being developed) so I can finally support Catholic Bibles.

DataFox 1.9.5 Released

By
Brian
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0

Announcing the release of DataFox 1.9.5, with:

  • Support for selfcare.ndc.bsnl.co.in, thanks to Rohit Singh for the help. The “charged usage” is displayed as 0, (at least for his account) and this is the value DataFox uses to display the progress; so if your account has this same problem, you will not see a progress bar at all and the surplus calculations will be off. Hopefully BSNL fixes this problem soon. If you manually enter selfcare.wdc.bsnl.co.in in the domain field, DataFox might work for that too because they appear to use the same backend. Unfortunately, because nobody has sent me their credentials, I have been unable to test this or add support if required.
  • Increased Firefox compatibility range to 15 – I don’t want to be forced to release a new version every couple of months with these monthly major version changes.

As always, if you want support for the selfcare portals, please send me your credentials or I have no way of implementing support and I will have to simply ignore and / or delete your comments.

Google Talk Not Authorized – Pidgin / Trillian

By
Brian
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0

I had been struggling with this problem for quite some time; every now and then Pidgin would refuse to connect to Google Talk and give me a Not Authorized failure message. All credentials, server details and network conditions were unchanged. I installed Trillian and found that when Pidgin failed in this way, Trillian wouldn’t connect either.A few forum threads would suggest updating to newer versions of Pidgin/Trillian or changing servers and re-checking credentials; most were dated threads which are irrelevant today. Pidgin would resume working as suddenly as it stopped, but sometimes after days of being unable to connect. All this time, the GMail based chat would work without issue, a veritable PIA!

I found, entirely by accident that my account had an Account Locked status if I logged in with the official Google Talk client. Unfortunately, I didn’t have their official client installed all this time, so I didn’t realize this earlier. Attempting to login to chat at this time would present you with a captha and after passing through this, you would be able to connect on Pidgin too. Apparently Pidgin and Trillian are foxed when the account is locked and don’t know how to proceed; I have no idea why my account gets locked either… I also don’t know what the platform independent solution is because AFAIK the official client is available only on Windows; logging in and out of chat in GMail didn’t help.

TL;DR If you get a Not Authorized message in Pidgin or Trillian, login using the official Google Talk client, pass the capthca test and you will now be able to connect again, even after quitting the official client.

DataFox 1.9.3 Released

By
Brian
-
7

Nothing special to see here, just a release I was forced to make to increase the range of Firefox versions that DataFox supports due to the recent Firefox 5 release. I have tested DataFox even with Firefox 6 and it works just fine, so increased the range to support Firefox 6. No new features or fixes in this release.

Something I may not have mentioned earlier, for Firefox 4 (and up) users, if you are wondering where DataFox has gone, you need to enable the Add-on bar from the View > Toolbar menu (or press ‘Ctrl + /’).

I am aware that DataFox does not work with the new BSNL selfcare sites; if users from each zone would send me their usernames and passwords, that would help a great deal. If you want selfcare support, please send me your credentials.

Share and enjoy!

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