[Rd] Firefox 3 and HTML Search

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 1/9/2009 11:59 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> I finally upgraded to Firefox 3.05 from 2.x, and now I can reproduce a 
> bug a colleague has been complaining about but which I hadn't been able 
> to reproduce before.  In Windows, set Firefox as the default browser. 
> Then in Rgui (seems to affect all versions up to R-devel), use the menu 
> to open HTML Help, and choose "Search Engine and Keywords".
> 
> Enter a keyword (e.g. plot), and click on "Search".
> 
> Things are a lot slower than they used to be with Firefox 2, but 
> eventually I get a result, starting out
> 
> Search Results
> The search string was "plot"
> 
> base-defunct
>      Defunct Functions in Base Package
> expression
>      Unevaluated Expressions
> 
> 
> However, the current URL is not the same as it was before:  it is now 
> listed as
> 
> file:///<RHOME>/doc/html/index.html
> 
> so the links don't work:  they are entered as 
> "../../../library/base/html/base-defunct.html", etc. in the source, and 
> the expect the current directory to be
> 
> file:///<RHOME>/doc/html/search/
> 
> If I set Internet Explorer as my default browser (yuck), things are 
> fine, so this is a Firefox 3 bug, or a new Java bug, or an R bug that 
> was masked before.
> 
> Any suggestions of workarounds?

As Brian and Marc pointed out, this is a Firefox 3.0 bug.  As it turns 
out, it was repaired in November, but not approved for release in 3.0.5 
or 3.0.6 (due this month??).  I've been told it will make it into 3.0.7.

For more on this, see

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=445004

Duncan Murdoch