Some website need their plugins to be installed.

Could you provide the link

22 May 2013

Dear Mr. Jayakumars,

Thank you for your response. I'm afraid, however, that it appears to be a nonsequitur. This isn't about websites; there is no link. The plugins (Java, Adobe Reader, FlashPlayer) are installed exactly the same way for both Firefox 20.0.1 and Firefox 21.0 installations. They work exactly correctly for Firefox 20.0.1, but Firefox 21.0 reports no plugins installed. For what is it looking? Thanks again.

Sincerely, Ian H. Redmount

Check whether your plugins are installed / updated

• https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/

22 May 2013

Dear Mr. Jayakumars,

Thank you for your continued attention to this. I am already familiar with the Add-Ons Manager and plugincheck tool. The problem appears to be more foundational than you may imagine. The plugins are installed in the /opt/sfw/lib/firefox/plugins subdirectory for Firefox 21.0, in a manner identical to that for previous versions of Firefox. But the Add-Ons Manager reports ``You do not have any add-ons of this type [plugins] installed. The plugincheck tool lists no plugins, though it works exactly as expected for Firefox 20.0.1, with plugins installed character-for-character the same way. So: How is Firefox 21.0 expecting plugins to be installed? Where is it looking? What is it looking for? What is changed in this regard between Firefox 21.0 and 20.0.1?

Thanks again for your continued assistance.

Sincerely, Ian H. Redmount

If you copied the plugins to the plugins folder in the Firefox program folder then you should move the files in this folder to the browser folder (browser/plugins) to make Firefox find them.

• http://www.ghacks.net/2013/05/15/why-you-may-have-lost-access-to-plugins-or-extensions-in-firefox-21/
• http://mike.kaply.com/2013/04/24/major-changes-coming-in-firefox-21/

I thank cor-el for posting the preceding. It solved the problem for me.

However when such a major change is made one might wonder why it is that the upgrade kit did not make the change for us. *MOST* Firefox users are NOT computer geeks after all. All they know is that things like Flash no longer work. So they go back to IE.  :-(

You're welcome

Flash isn't installed this way and should be found via other means.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Determining_plugin_directory_on_Linux
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Gecko_Plugin_API_Reference/Plug-in_Basics#How_Gecko_finds_plug-ins

23 May 2013

Gentlemen,

Thank you all for your assistance with this problem. Mr. Cor-El's suggestion to move the firefox/plugins directory to firefox/browser/plugins seems to have restored the status quo ante. That includes my version of Flash, by the way.

I must also agree with ``a_user_name that it would have been nice to know this. My Firefox upgrade procedure is a routine that has been fixed through more than twenty versions of Firefox. It does not include browsing through some of the sources to which Mr. Cor-El links. I would ask all you developers, if you are going to change the way Firefox must be installed, put a big splashy notice to that effect on the ``Your Firefox Is Up to Date page that comes up with each new version (the one with the video advertizing Firefox for Android). It would spare much aggravation.

Many thanks again, everyone, for your help.

Sincerely, Ian H. Redmount