Notes and a workaround: Firefox 2.0.0.11 (Ubuntu) Segfaults at restart, & Stylish problem with userstyles not being applied

I began migrating my Firefox extensions from Windows to Ubuntu by installing Extension List Dumper in Windows’ Firefox, and then working my way through the list generated by it in Ubuntu. However, at some point I discovered that Stylish‘s userstyles were no longer being applied, and that Firefox could no longer restart itself using the Restart button which becomes available after installing an extension.

What’s worse, using the command-line to start Firefox I discovered that it did attempt to restart when told to, but it only resulted in a Segmentation fault.

I initially suspected that there was some sort of a conflict between the beautiful NASA Night Launch theme and Stylish, but after starting with a new, clean profile and installing extensions one by one instead of en masse, I finally traced the problem back to Colorzilla, one of my favorite extensions. Without it, everything seems to be working, and with it, Firefox segfaults two, sometimes three times in a row before finally restarting. So the workaround to the problems listed in the title is to uninstall Colorzilla.

The problematic version of Colorzilla I was using was the one currently available from Mozilla’s Add-ons page, 1.0. A new Beta version is available from Colorzilla’s official home page, which also mentions problems with Ubuntu and FC5, and suggests a solution which, if it works, should allow you to keep using the non-Beta version of Colorzilla. I haven’t tested either of these solutions.

I haven’t come across these issues with Colorzilla under Windows.

When tracking down this problem, the Restart Firefox extension turned out to be quite handy.

Firefox blocking bookmarklet pop-ups

I’ve made extensive use of bookmarklet for Blosxom‘s wikieditish plugin. Essentially it works by providing me with a piece of JavaScript that I can bookmark, and then use to pick up headlines directly for blogging.

The trouble is, Firefox’s pop-up blocker seems to have an issue with such bookmarks. Not always, but about once a day it gets the idea that the wikieditish page summoned by the bookmarklet is an evil pop-up and must be blocked. And once it does this there’s no way of convincing it otherwise: all wikieditish bookmarklets will be blocked every time after that. Only shutting down and restarting Firefox corrects it, but that, needless to say, is a nuisance.

I’ve found only one reference to such behaviour elsewhere on the net, on what looks like a Firefox developer’s page, and even that is from way back in the beginning of 2005. Apparently the issue was even worse back then, and they’ve improved it over the years, but the bug is still there.

Browsing images back and forth with JavaScript bookmarks (Firefox)

Jumping to the next picture, when the current URL points directly to an image file ending in a digit (an example), can be achieved by <a href="javascript:(function(){ var e,s; IB=1; function isDigit(c) { return (%220%22 <= c && c =0; –e) if (isDigit(L.charAt(e))) { for(s=e-1; s>=0; –s) if (!isDigit(L.charAt(s))) break; break; } ++s; if (e<0) return; oldNum = L.substring(s,e+1); newNum = %22%22 + (parseInt(oldNum,10) + IB); while (newNum.length bookmarking this piece of code I picked up at reddit:

javascript:(function(){ var e,s; IB=1; function isDigit(c) { return (%220%22 <= c && c =0; --e) if (isDigit(L.charAt(e))) { for(s=e-1; s>=0; --s) if (!isDigit(L.charAt(s))) break; break; } ++s; if (e<0) return; oldNum = L.substring(s,e+1); newNum = %22%22 + (parseInt(oldNum,10) + IB); while (newNum.length < oldNum.length) newNum = %220%22 + newNum; location.href = L.substring(0,s) + newNum + L.slice(e+1); })();

Another <a href="javascript:(function(){ var e,s; IB=-1; function isDigit(c) { return (%220%22 <= c && c =0; –e) if (isDigit(L.charAt(e))) { for(s=e-1; s>=0; –s) if (!isDigit(L.charAt(s))) break; break; } ++s; if (e<0) return; oldNum = L.substring(s,e+1); newNum = %22%22 + (parseInt(oldNum,10) + IB); while (newNum.length bookmark for jumping to the previous picture is a simple modification of the above with the variable IB assigned the value -1:

javascript:(function(){ var e,s; IB=-1; function isDigit(c) { return (%220%22 <= c && c =0; --e) if (isDigit(L.charAt(e))) { for(s=e-1; s>=0; --s) if (!isDigit(L.charAt(s))) break; break; } ++s; if (e<0) return; oldNum = L.substring(s,e+1); newNum = %22%22 + (parseInt(oldNum,10) + IB); while (newNum.length < oldNum.length) newNum = %220%22 + newNum; location.href = L.substring(0,s) + newNum + L.slice(e+1); })();

Disabling middle click scrolling in Firefox

God, while trying to crack this, I even went so far as to consider hacking my MemoryStick reader-endowed Sony MSAC mouse’s driver, and in the end, the solution was as simple as unticking one item (Tools > Options... > Advanced > General > Use autoscrolling) in Firefox’s settings.

I think the naming of the feature is partly to blame for my problems, however; I really have a hard time associating Use autoscrolling with Clicking the MMB on anything but a hyperlink turns your mouse into a one-dimensional scrolling device, thus rendering it quite useless.

Phew, finally my middle button is free for use in, for example, Snap Links, which for some reason has ceased to respond to RMB clicks.