Problem
If you’ve updated to a recent version of Firefox and also use the Flash Debug Player to debug Flash & Flex apps, you may already be painfully aware of the recent changes to the way Firefox 3.6.6 handles its plugins.
Now, rather than simply alerting you, letting you dismiss the error and continue on your merry way, Firefox takes control and kills the process for you because it detects that something is wrong. This completely disables the plugin and prevents you from debugging your app (while making you hang around for 45 seconds, just to infuriate you that little bit more) ;]
This also causes a problem during general day-to-day surfing because any site that doesn’t handle errors properly and/or throws null objects ( … yeah channel4.com I’m looking at you!) will also result in your Flash plugin being disabled.
Solution
You need to go in to the Firefox config settings (type about:config in to the location bar) and search for dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll – double click that to set it to false. You may also need to set dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs to -1. Now restart your browser and you should once again be able to debug your apps and dismiss the warnings as you used to do in the good old days. Ahhhhh bliss.
More info here.
[UPDATE]
In Firefox 4.0.1 dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll (needed for the solution above) no longer seems available. You can still try disabling the plugin-crash-detection as follows: dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs to -1
Thanks for posting this, debugging has been hell for the past week or so.
Thanks a bunch! That’s what I was looking for…
Why oh why haven’t i googled this before…you are my hero !!!!
Thank you so much, you’ve saved my debugging and sanity :)
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This worked for me! Thanks so much for sharing!
Win7 x64 Firefox with Flash debug plugin
Thank you for this, it’s been driving me batty for weeks, and I was growing weary of switching between the debug player and the regular player!
Thank you soooo much, I was having no idea why my flash was hanging when I was trying to debug, once I followed your steps the issue is now resolved! Awesome!
mate, your a lifesaver! hated IE and chrome just doesn’t quite cut the mustard!
I was about to throw Firefox away … together with my computer. Thank you very much!!
unfortunately it appears that I am unlucky as this does not seem to fix the problem for me. Firefox 3.6.13, debug flashplayer 10.1, Ubuntu 10.10
Thanks for posting this! Firefox was driving me insane!
A thousand internets for you, my dear sir!
Hey, it works great for Firefox 3, but what about Firefox 4?
OMG THANK YOU! Seriously I was about to smash my pc to bits because of that bug, very site it throwing up null objects and causing firefox to hang for 1min and then disable flash, your a life saver.
peace!
OMG you’re a lifesaver, as a Flash developer I want to debug my files without the constant urge of blowing my computer up – thanks!
This fix does seem to work most of the time, at least until you run an application with lots of CDN connection errors like Pandora, MTV network video players, etc. Then Firefox will crash all over you anyway :(
Hi,
Mac user, but i can’t find the “dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll” in the about:config
Please help, I Can’t test my apps on firefox and staging environment.
thank you in advance!