[Bug 157872] firefox: can't choose plugins for individual mime types

[Robert Persson]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: firefox

In Firefox you can't specify which plugin is to deal with which mime
type. The lack of this functionality makes dealing with embedded media
in Firefox a very ugly experience.

The reason this functionality is particularly important is this: Plugins
such as the mplayer and xine ones can handle most media you throw at
them, but they usually don't do it gracefully. For instance you often
have to wait for the whole file to download before playback will start.
Sometimes you wait for the whole file to download only to find that it
doesn't play anyway. The VLC plugin used to crash my browser so I
haven't tried using it recently. For this reason I find myself forced to
use the realplayer plugin, which works much better, but only plays a
limited range of media types. This means that when I try to play streams
from, for instance, http://concertzender.nl, I am s**t out of luck. I
get a message telling me that the mime-type x-mplayer2 is not
recognised.

The only workaround I know is to use Opera (which does let you specify
plugins by mime type) to access these particular streams, in other words
to open a second browser whenever Firefox complains about a missing
plugins. More than any other application, browsers should "just work".
They should work as well as they do in Windows or Mac OS. Any bugs or
missing features that prevent this from happening are very serious ones.

** Affects: firefox (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
firefox: can't choose plugins for individual mime types
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/157872
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mozilla
Bugs, which is a bug contact for firefox in ubuntu.