video will not start until closing the window

Asked by BigAl737

I'm using Firefox and Ubuntu 8 (the version with the Heron). I'm not much of a computer person (sorry) so I'll bet this is really easy. Videos will play for me (including YouTube) but I have to click the "x" in the upper right hand corner of the video window to close it before it will start to play. Is there a way to have these videos start automatically? Thanks.

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Ubuntu firefox-3.0 Edit question
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BigAl737
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wojox (wojox) said :
#1

In Firefox navigation box type in:

about:plugins

Look for Flash and tell me what version you have.

Mine looks like this:

Shockwave Flash

    File name: /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so
    Shockwave Flash 10.0 r32

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BigAl737 (biggeral-1999) said :
#2

Thanks for the reply. It says

File name: libflashplayer.so
Shockwave Flash 9.0 r246

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BigAl737 (biggeral-1999) said :
#3

And I just scrolled down and found another entry for Shockwave Flash. It says:

File name Libflashplayer.so
Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22

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BigAl737 (biggeral-1999) said :
#4

More info:

It seems I have 2 windows superimposed over each other. The top window is black with a "play" icon in the middle. When I right click on the top window it gives me a bunch of options but none say "about Adobe Flashplayer". When I close the top window by clicking on the "x" in the upper right corner, the video starts up in the same space previously covered over by the top window. When I right click on the lower window it givew me the "About Adobe Flashplayer" option. When selected this takes me to Adobe's website and says that I have version 9.0.246.0 installed.

I'm not sure what program is controlling that top window. If I could disable it I think my problem would be solved.

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wojox (wojox) said :
#5

It seems there is a conflict between the two. Open the terminal and run:

sudo apt-get remove --purge flashplugin-nonfree -y && sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree -y

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BigAl737 (biggeral-1999) said :
#6

I did that and I think this step switched me from using Flashplayer 9 to Flashplayer 10. I still had the original problem however. After some digging around I learned that a program called gnash was also set to play .swf files so I used the synaptic package manager to uninstall anything gnash. This did the trick. Flash windows now start playing as the web page loads. As a bonus, I can now log in and watch MLB.com TV. Before this MLB.tv would run the flash screen that shows the game you're trying watch but would never give me a chance to login to my account. The login window would never appear. Now it does. Go figure :-)

All is working great now. Thanks very much for your help. I really appreciate it.

Allan