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On geocaching.com, I can no longer access my Magellan GPS with Firefox v22. It says 'cannot find Magellan communicator'. Worked on previous Firefox. Works on IE

  • 9 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 7 views
  • Last reply by lazybear

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To send geocache data to a Magellan GPS, Magellan Communicator is required to be installed on the PC. I have that - v15.02. I have been send geocache data to my GPS for years. Today, I cannot. The popup window created by www.geocaching.com says it cannot find Magellan Communicator. I have re-installed Magellan Communicator as a test. I have sent geocache data to the GPS using Internet Explorer. It works fine, altho the settings are such I have to enable activex controls within the popup. Previous firefox versions worked just fine. This recent update seems to be less friendly in this respect. Looking forward to a resolution. I'd hate to have to use MSIE just for moving geocaches to my GPS. Cheers LB

To send geocache data to a Magellan GPS, Magellan Communicator is required to be installed on the PC. I have that - v15.02. I have been send geocache data to my GPS for years. Today, I cannot. The popup window created by www.geocaching.com says it cannot find Magellan Communicator. I have re-installed Magellan Communicator as a test. I have sent geocache data to the GPS using Internet Explorer. It works fine, altho the settings are such I have to enable activex controls within the popup. Previous firefox versions worked just fine. This recent update seems to be less friendly in this respect. Looking forward to a resolution. I'd hate to have to use MSIE just for moving geocaches to my GPS. Cheers LB

All Replies (9)

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Does it appear on either of these tabs as disabled? The disabled plugins and extensions cluster toward the bottom of their lists:

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons > Plugins category
orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons > Extensions category

If not... are you sure it worked in Firefox 21? There was a change in Firefox 21 that affects some add-ons. Check out this article and see whether it's relevant: Windows Media or other plugins stopped working after Firefox update.

Any luck?

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Magellan Communicator isn't a Firefox odd-on. It's a Windows program that allows the GPS to be recognized as a USB device. In all honesty, I don't know what version of Firefox I was using 2 weeks ago, but it recognized and found Magellan Communicator no problem. I noticed the update to Firefox a day or so ago and today was my first try at sending data to the GPS from geocaching.com since the Firefox update.

Thanks for trying! Cheers LB

PS: I installed Chrome as a test this evening and it works fine as well. MSIE & Chrome are good to go. Firefox v22 not so much. I would prefer to use one only browser... Firefox if I can...

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There has been a change in where Firefox searches for plugins and the plugins folder in the Firefox program folder is no longer scanned for plugins, so Firefox won't find them anymore if they are installed in the plugins folder instead of the "browser\plugins" folder that Firefox now scans.

You can set the plugins.load_appdir_plugins pref to true on the about:config page to make Firefox scan the "<install>/plugins/" directory for plugins like the WMP plugin (np-mswmp.dll).

You can alternatively move plugins from "<install directory>\plugins\" to "<install directory>\browser\plugins\" (create this folder when missing) to make Firefox find them again.

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Thanks for your help. Magellan Communicator is NOT a plugin or add-on. It is standalone software to let the PC move data to the GPS.

Further to all this, I just UNinstalled Firefox v22 and installed Firefox v21... Everything works just fine! Magellan Communicator is found, used correctly, and I am a happy guy.

For now, I have disabled Firefox updates.

Thanks again. Cheers LB

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Since I don't have a Magellan unit, this is hard to debug, but I installed the Magellan Communicator software and registered on the site.

When I pop up the window from the "Send to My GPS" button and click the Magellan link, the plugin is not found. Inspecting the source code, I see a problem:

<embed type="application/x-magellan-plugin" width="0" height="0" hidden="true" id="pluginId">

In Firefox 22, an embed that has hidden="true" is completely ignored. I suppose this is to block annoying or dangerous hidden objects, but it seems to be a problem for some legitimate sites, too.

The solution is for geocaching.com to remove this from their template and, if necessary, use another method for hiding the object. For example:

<span style="visibility:hidden"><embed type="application/x-magellan-plugin" width="0" height="0" id="pluginId"></span>

However, that doesn't help you in the short run...


Could you try the following hack? It removes the hidden from the embed and then re-runs part of the script in the page. Because I don't have a device, I can't tell whether it works.

(1) Select and copy the following long line of code:

document.getElementById("pluginInfoText").innerHTML=""; document.getElementById("pluginId").removeAttribute("hidden"); if (InitializePlugin()) {jQuery('#checkDeviceBut').removeAttr("disabled"); OnCheckConnectionClick();}

(2) In the Send to GPS window, after clicking the Magellan tab, double-click the title bar to maximize the window, then open the web console using Ctrl+Shift+k

(3) Paste the code next to the caret (>) and press Enter to run it

Any luck?

(Since I don't have a device attached, I get this:
Magellan Communicator found. Having issues?
Please click here to install the latest PC version.
Please click here to install the latest MAC version.
No supported devices found.
Hopefully it works better for you.)

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By the way, although Magellan Communicator is a stand-alone program, the way that web pages connect to it is through a plugin. When you check the plugins list, you should see it there. Screen shot attached for reference.

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The developers have reversed course and will switch back to <embed hidden="true"> being okay in Firefox 23. This news is from: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/964324#answer-458443. Although a beta version of Firefox 23 is available, this update was just submitted earlier this week, so the current download doesn't yet have the fix.

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A possible workaround is the use code in userContent.css to override the hidden attribute.

embed {
  display:-moz-box !important;
} 

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Many thanks to cor-el & jscher2000 for all your assistance in this matter. I chose to revert to Firefox v21 to avoid the problem and have now updated to v2301 and the issue has resolved. Again - THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!