I'm at my wit's end. I've installed the latest version of jre (7u45) and everything went well. Followed all the instructions here (http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installing_Java) and here (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/manual-plugin-install-linux-136395.html) on setting up symbolic links and all. libnpjp2.so is now happily residing in my /usr/lib/browser-plugins folder. And when I start Firefox, nothing appears under Plug-Ins. I've tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling both java and firefox numerous times to no avail. Firefox absolutely refuses to recognize java. Not sure what to do now.