Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Firefox 26 Breaks Google Hangouts Code

Around the 11th of January, 2014, Firefox 26 was released. This release almost went unnoticed by me but I found that it made using Firefox in my Hangouts extension impossible. Luckily Google Chrome still works for me. The problem is subtle. When Firefox is being used the Hangout extension loads as it normally does, but javascript that would change the content of html or the source for img tags doesn't work.

For example, this javascript code would normally work, but doesn't in Firefox 26:

document.getElementById("someImgID").src = "some_img_url.png"
And this code, which is really simple javascript, doesn't work either.
document.getElementById("someDivID").innerHTML = "some text"
I've been trying many things to see if I cannot get the extension so that it works in firefox again. The error in the 'someImgID' code is a 404 NOT FOUND error, so I've been moving the png file around in the different folders of the project to see if I cannot find a place where the image can be read. No luck so far. In the case of the 'someDivID' code, the error is noticed as a 'undefined' block. Truly I'm not sure I even know what this means under these circumstances. I don't even know what to try in order to test this problem. The text in question is hard coded into the javascript. It's not being loaded from anywhere as any kind of file or anything.

As I said, Chrome still works. I fear, though, that chrome will be updated some day soon and my hangout extension will be rendered totally unusable. This is my fear.