As what a couple of you have probably already noticed, the official “Windows Media Player Firefox Plugin” does only work with one of your installed Firefox instances. If you have installed multiple versions in parallel or running nightly builds, it wont work. Before you are able to watch embedded wmv content, the installed library file “np-mswmp.dll” has to be copied to the plugins folder of the appropriate Firefox installation. While doing QA and having the need to download and running nightly builds of Shiretoko or Minefiled, it requires you to do this steps again and again. So is a simpler solution out there to solve this issue? I say, Yes!
There are only two steps necessary to see the plugin appear in each Firefox installation. It’s not magic but a simple registry hack, which let the plugin be shared. I’ve no idea why Microsoft hasn’t already done that for this plugin. They are still aware in using this way, e.g. for “Windows Presentation Foundation plug-in“. I’ll get in contact with Microsoft and hopefully it can be solved in the near future.
But lets return to the instruction how to get it working. Just follow those steps:
- The Window Media Player will be installed to “c:\Program Files\Windows Media Player”. So lets re-use this location. Create a sub-folder called “Plugin” and copy the library “np-mswmp.dll” over there.
- Go to bug 421820 and download the registry hack.
- If the installation folder of the Windows Media Player application differs from the one in step 1, you have to update the path inside the registry file before applying the file.
- Double click the reg file to add the entries to your registry.
That’s all. Now each installed version of Firefox should be able to use the plugin to show embedded WMV content. At least you have to restart the browser, when it is already open. To make sure it has been recognized correctly open the Add-ons manager and click the plugins tab. The plugin has to be listed now.
Isn’t it possible for Firefox to autodetect the WMP plugin like the Adobe Flash plugin?
Adobe uses the same way by adding a registry key under HKLM\MozillaPlugins. Its entries are used by Firefox to detect where the plugin can be found, which version is installed and its name. Further it also works with each installed Firefox instance. The creation of those entries is made by the Flash installer. The installer of the Windows Media Player Plugin doesn’t use that way.
Does that work on 64 bit Windows, where WMP might be a 64 bit plugin?
You should try. I think so. If the plugin works with your default installation of Firefox it should also work after applying those steps. Sadly I don’t have a 64bit Windows yet and cannot test on my own. If you can add a comment with your results that would be really appreciated!
Or just put the dll in %appdata%\Mozilla\plugins (it’s not specific to app or profile), and have it work everywhere.
Mook, thanks for your comment. That would be fine, when you are the only person on that computer. It will not help on shared computers. That’s why you have to specify a folder outside of your windows profile. I think the best solution is to copy/move the plugin to its corresponding application.
Back when I cared about the plugins in Firefox on Windows, I set the MOZ_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable to a folder with all the plugins:
http://gemal.dk/mozilla/plugins.html
if you have x64 system, then this reg file needs to be edited to change path from
*Program Files* to
*Program Files (x86)*
Work only for .wmv (and not for the bunch of other files that I can play in wmp, like .avi, .mpeg, .mkv). For this I had to configure QuickTime player a default one.
And wmp plugin doesn’t work with my webdav (https://) drive with self-signed certificate. I think this is due to certificate error. If I try to open same file in IE8 with WMP12 there is at least a warning about bad certificate, but I can continue to play it, but WMP Plugin just sits there quietly and nothing happens.
wmp plugin does not work in cometbird(latest version).
does anybody know how to make it work?
It should be similar as for developer builds of Firefox. Check the registry file above and update it with the correct paths Cometbird is using. Due to I don’t use this software I cannot really help.