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Shockwave plugin

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fredriley
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Last seen: 16 years 11 months ago
Joined: 2007-11-02 15:15
Shockwave plugin

Hi

First off, a big thanks to all those involved in this project, as it's solved a problem which I've had for a while, namely how to put a website with dynamic (PHP/mySQL) elements onto a stick/CD. I've just today, though, been trying to install the Shockwave plugin for Firefox, and both methods mentioned in the documentation at https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#plugins fail. If I try the plugin on a system, laptop say, with only IE installed, it whizzes through without any option to browse for the copy of Firefox on the stick; if I then install FF on the laptop I can browse for the FF copy on stick, but whichever directory I choose I get the gnomic "You must select a Netscape Plugins folder to install into", without any sign of what distinguishes such a folder (the presence of a particular file?); if I choose the manual "geeky" method of copying the DLL file to the stick's plugins directory, that fails also - a white rectangle appears in the browser client area where the movie should be, but the movie itself is absent.

Looking through the support forum for "Shockwave" hits a number of threads, including:

https://portableapps.com/node/475
https://portableapps.com/node/556
https://portableapps.com/node/9764

The gist of these is that the plugin needs to write Registry entries and copy wodges of files to various folders, and that the DLL file itself is only a stub pointing to these other files. Thread 556 says that a portable Shockwave plugin is "out of the question at this stage", though thread 475 has a message pointing to a hack by a "resourceful Italian" at https://portableapps.com/node/541 which seems to simulate these Registry keys though I've not had time to try it yet.

My Q then is:

Can the Shockwave plugin be installed on a portable device at all? If it can, is the installation a serious PITA, or is there a wash 'n' go method?

Whatever the answers, I would gently chide you for leaving up the plugins documentation at https://portableapps.com/support/firefox_portable#plugins as both methods outlined there fail, so I'm sure that others will spend, like myself, a fruitless hour or so trying them out in vain. It's just a gentle chiding, though, as the Portable Apps thing is so wonderful that it would be seriously grumpy to slag off the documentation... :o)

Cheers

Fred