[Rd] Firefox 3 and HTML Search

[Duncan Murdoch]

Firefox 3.0.7 has been released, and it fixes the bug described below.

Duncan Murdoch

On 1/12/2009 8:22 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> 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
>