973352 - Plugincheck doesn't show any results for the Unknown Plugins

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 956905

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[AYMAN]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140212131424

Steps to reproduce:

In the actual Firefox version (Firefox 27.0.1), the plugin check website at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/ show a list of Unknown Plugins (blue Research buttons)




Actual results:

In the new Firefox beta version 28.0b2, the plugin check website at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/ doesn't show any results for the Unknown Plugins, though it did in version 27.0.1 .

(in the same PC)


Expected results:

The plugincheck should show the blue Research buttons for the detected Unknown Plugins.

Comment 1

[DJ-Leith]

This situation is caused by bug 757726

"disallow enumeration of navigator.plugins"
bug 757726
This is the code that cloaks plugins in 28+.  This breaks the 'plugincheck' web site.


See also,

"RFE an "About plugincheck" page, visible from plugincheck"
bug 965812
for more information, including BACKGROUND and links to other bugs in bugzilla.


"Cloaking plugin names to limit browser fingerprinting in Firefox"
http://cpeterso.com/blog/02013/11/cloaking-plugins-to-limit-browser-fingerprinting/
By 
Chris Peterson
A good introduction to this recent change.


There are two bugs open to update the 'plugincheck service':

"Fix plugincheck to not use plugin enumeration" 
bug 938885
This is the bug to 'do the plugincheck without using the enumeration',
i.e. to 'fix plugincheck web site'.


"Publish JSON list of all plugins for use on /plugincheck"
bug 956905
This is the bug to 'get the database server to produce a list(s) of known plugins (with their versions)' for the 'plugincheck web site' to use. I envisage that there may be several lists: one for each OS & browser combination, e.g. Windows & IE, Mac & Firefox, Linux & Firefox etc.

Instead of enumerating the 'visiting browser's plugins', the new 'plugincheck web site' will now 'go through the appropriate list (from the JSON)' of plugins, one by one, and see if it is installed and, if it is, if it is up to date.

DJ-Leith

Comment 2

[AYMAN]

HI, THANK YOU DJ-Leith FOR YOUR REPLY, BUT SORRY I DON'T UNDERSTAND VERY MUCH, I DON'T HAVE ANY PROGRAMMING SKILLS, I JUST NOTICED THIS ISSUE WITH THE VERSION 28 AND I WONT TO KNOW IF IT WILL BI FIXED OR IT WILL REMAIN LIKE THIS IN THE FUTURE VERSIONS. PLEASE TRY TO CORRECT IT, I FREQUENTLY USE THE PLUGINCHECK SERVICE AND IT IS VERY HELPFUL FOR ME.

THANKS :)

Comment 3

[martinfp642]

[testday-20140214]
I tried to install a plugin like java, and it was up to date. I don't know what do you mean AYMAN. But I think that what DJ-Leith wanted to say is that this new version has a lot of diferences between the others and it hasn't the same things.

Comment 4

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Hi Ayman, thanks for reporting this. 
It sounds like this is already in the process of getting fixed. 
I'm marking this as a duplicate of bug 956905. If you would like to follow what's happening for this issue, you can read the comments in bug 956905 and bug  938885. Cheers and thanks for helping us improve Firefox!

Comment 5

[AYMAN]

Nice :)

Thank you all for your help ;)