(leaving Firefox 2 untouched)
does not appear to work with a XEPC edition…
There are now deb packages available for a much simpler installation method that doesn't involve installing into your user directory. It also doesn't have the same printing problems associated with the method detailed below and should work with any standard EeePC setup.
Created from post by clevin (http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=22973)
— Alan Brown 2008/06/19 06:34
You perform the following at your own risk! I've done the following on my 4G EeePC (701 model), which has 1GB RAM, running default Xandros distro in 'advanced desktop mode' - and it all worked fine, however no guarantees are given that this will work on your EeePC, or that it won't screw up something else.
Why would I want to run Firefox 3 on my EeePC?
There are several reasons you might want to run Firefox 3 on your EeePC, faster browsing, better security features, but the major advantage in my opinion, is the ability to zoom in and out of the web page with Ctrl+ and Ctrl-. In Firefox 2 this just changed the font size, but in Firefox 3 this zooms in and out of the entire webpage, making it display much better on the small EeePC screen.
BBC News Page under Firefox 2:
BBC News Page under Firefox 3 (zoomed out):
By now you probably know that firefox will require gtk 2.10+, which stock EEE doesn't have.
Here is a work around:
1. Download gtk 2.10
wget http://apt.linex.org/linex/gtk-2.10/libgtk2.0-0_2.10.13-2~bpo.1_i386.deb
2. Extract it to a folder, e.g., gtk2-10
dpkg-deb -x libgtk2.0-0_2.10.13-2~bpo.1_i386.deb gtk2-10
N.B. Later steps assume you have extracted the 'gtk2-10' folder to your /home/user directory, so you might want to move it there if you have extracted it to somewhere else (Use File Manager to do this if you like)
3. Download Firefox 3 Linux version from here or via the image link below.
4. Extract Firefox 3 in file manager to a firefox folder.
5. Go into the firefox folder, open firefox ( script file in the folder, about 4KB in size) with text editor.
6. Add
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/gtk2-10/usr/lib"
after first line. the file should look like this
#!/bin/sh # export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/home/user/gtk2-10/usr/lib" ... ...
7. Save the file, and double-click it to start Firefox 3 (N.B. you must close down Firefox 2 before running this, or another instance of Firefox 2 will just start up)
If you are running full desktop mode, you can right click desktop and create an application launcher and point it at the firefox script. If you don't like the default blue cogwheel, you can change the icon of this Application Launcher by right clicking, selecting Properties and then on the General Tab, clicking on the icon to select another one - there is a proper Firefox icon in there somewhere.
If you are running easy mode, which I do, what I did is to first enable “home” icon (enabling_the_icewm_start_menu_in_easy_mode), then edit the icewm menu and add firefox 3's path to the menu (e.g. Info: IceWM Start Menu Templates ), such that I can run firefox 3 from icewm menu, no terminal.
“Running Firefox 3 from the commandline results in the following warning (although it still runs) in the shell window. Can I get rid of the warning?”
(Gecko:11543): Gtk-WARNING: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: “clearlooks”,
From forum post by Walzi:
Assumption: gtk2.10 is extracted at /home/user/gtk2-10
cd /home/user/gtk2-10/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0 ln -s /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/engines cd /home/user/gtk2-10/usr/share ln -s /usr/share/themes cd /usr/lib/gtk-2.0 sudo ln -s /home/user/gtk2-10/usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0
Voila - no more warnings!
Addendum:
“The above worked, but now I get this warning, can I get rid of this too?
Gecko:28215: Gtk-WARNING: Icon cache '/usr/share/pixmaps/hicolor/icon-theme.cache' is invalid
From forum post by Scullbox:
sudo cp /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc /home/user/gtk2-10/etc/gtk-2.0/ sudo cp /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.4.0/engines/libclearlooks.so /home/user/gtk2-10/lib/gtk-2.0/2.10.0/engines/
Copy /opt/firefox/plugins/libflashplayer.so to firefox/plugins/ - this should make Firefox 3 play Flash PS. Firefox 3 zooms out/in in flash video as well…
Strongbad Email Flash Animation at www.homestarrunner.com
If you have two versions of Firefox on your Eee and switch between them, you may get Firefox confused since both share the same profiles and it appears that the prefs.js files are written each time you start it up or something.
If you want to stick with Firefox 3, you can delete the old Firefox 2 from /opt and install Firefox 3. Reboot and everything (should) work as expected.
It appears that Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 cannot happily work side by side. (from Eddy2009's forum post)
“How do I get a Firefox 3 icon in the Quick Launch taskbar, like/instead of Firefox 2?”
Presuming you are already in advanced mode, right-click on an empty part of the panel, click “Add to Panel,” “Special Button,” “Non-KDE Application,” click the folder icon on the right side of the box below “Executable,” and browse to the firefox script file mentioned in the install instructions above that you have to double-click to start the program. I also recommend clicking on the default icon that looks like a gear and clicking the “Other icons” button and selecting the Firefox icon. I did this and removed the original Firefox icon I had in the panel that opened Firefox 2, and now my panel looks exactly like it did before–except now the firefox icon opens FF3 and it doesn't open a shell. (from bowlingblogger's forum post
