You can kill the background for speed, if you wish.[x]

Saturday, April 22, 2006

LaunchCast in Firefox! (Mostly)

OK, first, some blatant search engine optimization, to make sure those who need help can find it:
How to play launchcast in firefox playing launchcast in firefox firefox launchcast yahoo launchcast firefox firefox launchcast play in firefox DEATH TO IE How do I use launchcast in firefox ActiveX in firefox internet explorer only pages in firefox internet explorer firefox firefox ActiveX fish apples bananas.
Now that that's done with, here's the super awesome news. I noticed (via my supercool Webstats4U counter) a few people have gotten here looking for a way to get launchcast in firefox. Others have gotten here by googling "i hate macs," but that's a different post. Well, now you're in luck (you LaunchCast people, anyway), because some team over in Taiwan (great country, from what I hear) has created an extension that lets you run Internet Explorer. Not too exciting, except that this extension lets you run it inside Firefox! So you can have one tab using I------t E------r to render its pages, and all your others still using Firefox. I've tested it with Launchcast and am happy to report that it works flawlessly after a little configuration. So here's how:

  1. Download and install IETab.

  2. Once Firefox is restarted, IETab gives you a little success message.
    There will now be an icon in the status bar (that's at the bottom) that is a little Firefox logo.

  3. Left-Click on the icon and it will turn to an IE icon, and your page will re-load through IE. Quickly click it again, lest you unecessarily defile your browser.

  4. Now that you have seen the fancy tricks, it's time to set it up for launchcast. Right-click on the icon.

  5. In the "URL" space, type "*.launch.yahoo.com*" (minus quotes, of course, and make sure to get the diddlys otherwise known as asterisks in) and make sure to click "Add."

  6. That's it. Now, whenever you go to launchcast, IETab will automatically kick in. You'll still have to deal with IE, but within the comforting environment of Firefox.

  7. Many thanks to the IETab team for producing this excellent extension.
    To help you out, a couple quirks I've noticed are:

    • In my Firefox, the player opens in a new tab instead of a new window. I'm not sure if it's other extensions I've got installed (there's a lot of them) or IETab, but it's fine with me anyway.

    • Sometimes the Filters window will be shrunk to just the title bar. I fixed it by restoring and shrinking the main Firefox window, then it came up fine.



That's about it. Now all you Firefox devotees (or at least users) can use it for those annoying IE sites (yes, including Windows update. Come to think of it...
How to use windows update in firefox windows update firefox firefox windows update windoze update firefox update windows in firefox winblows update in firefox teeth using windows update in firefox windows update within firefox pears pomegranates.)
Anyway, as I was saying, any IE-only site is no longer IE-only. Pretty cool, huh?
P.S. Tip of the day: always remember to close your <ul> and <ol> tags.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I'm having a problem with IE Tab and launchcast ... At work and at home, I've got the latest Firefox 2x and IE Tab both installed. However, at home I can't seem to get Launchcast to play anything, while at work it seems to play fine.

Strangely enough, at home, I have the Firefox pop up blocker turned off, and when I click "listen to my station" in Launchcast, it tells me the popup was blocked. so I click the "try again" button, and a new tab opens with the launchcast listen stuff, but it sits on "tuning" and does absolutely nothing.

Now at work, no problems at all, it seems to work like expected.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong???? Launchcast is the only thing that I like about Yahoo, and I'm getting really frustrated!!!

Can you help me???

stephenthebaker at gmail.com

Anonymous said...

The quick solution for LaunchCast is something else I've discovered - Yahoo! Music Jukebox (formerly Yahoo! Music Engine). It tunes into your launchcast (among other things) without any browser necessary. Hmm...maybe I should make a post about this. Anyway, it has a mini mode that sits on your screen and lets you know what song is playing in a small window about the size you would expect for such things.
If you like the 100-point rating system (which I do), or don't really care, I highly reccommend Tomi Blinnikka's Taskbar Remote, which sits in your taskbar and allows you to control your LaunchCast. It has cool features like an optional info window, hiding the YMJ window, and playing launchcast automagically. but with the 100-point rating scale. If you don't want it attatched to your taskbar, or are into widgets, he also created a Yahoo! Widget that does the same thing, but floats around.
As for solving the problem, I would guess there's a problem with the extensions you have installed at home. To troubleshoot this, try either disabling your all extensions (except IE tab). Do you still have the problem? If not, re-enable the extensions one at a time, and check each time to see if the problem came back.
If it's not extension problems, check IETab's website for tips, or submit a feedback/bug report if you so desire.

Randy

Anonymous said...

IE TAB is not available for Linux Users. Is there any other way? IE and windows sucks a lot!

Anonymous said...

Looks like you'd have to run a VMWare of Windows:
http://ymusicblog.com/blog/2006/06/22/enjoy-yahoo-music-unlimited-on-linux/
Which still sucks. But not as much.