If you have read my previous article about how to install Flock on Ubuntu, then you might have installed it on your system.
One thing that I did not mention was how to view multimedia in Flock.
Since Flock is based upon Mozilla Firefox, we will use the same plugins that Firefox is using. In other words, there is no need at all, to install the plugins separately for Flock. If you have them working on Firefox, then these will also work with Flock.
However, Flock does not know where your plugins are installed, so you will have to tell it. This is simple. All we have to do, is provide a link to the Mozilla plugins folder, just as is the case with Firefox.
If you were to type about:plugins inside Firefox, you will be able to see all of the plugins which are available to use in Firefox. These plugins allow your browser to view audio files, video files, pdf files, java, and so on.
You want Flock to behave just as Firefox would.
We will link the plugins that Firefox is using to the Flock plugins folder.
Note: this installation is based upon the instructions for how to install Flock on Ubuntu.
Open the terminal and type the following:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/* /opt/flock/plugins
This will link all of the plugins used in Firefox to the Flock plugins folder. The * acts as a wildcard to select all of the files in the directory, since no other arguments are made.
Wasn’t that easy? Now open Flock and type about:plugins in the addressbar. You will notice that all of the plugins that you saw when you did the same with Firefox, are now available in Flock. It’s that easy.
Enjoy! 
13 Comments
Brent, you are our new Flock/Ubuntu guru dude.
Sweet!
Brent, I may not share quite the enthusiasm that many do for the “tu distro’s, but I am a debian fan and these instructions have been forwarded to my fellow deb buddies for their use…as well as a link to your blog.
thank you sir, you have done a great service.
h
Dude, Brent, …dude….seriously…..thank you!
I feel like a total Flockstar! lol
Hi all, flock seems to scan my /home/user/.mozilla/plugins directory if it cannot find any plugins at /home/user/.flock/plugins which is pretty annoying. How am I able to stop this behavior.
Hey bud, did you do what I said in the article? It shouldn’t be scanning for anything in the home directory. You must install Flock according to my instructions, then use my follow-up instructions to link to the Mozilla plugins folder.
Start here. Read everything.
I followed them exactly. But it seems that flock does not scan just its own plugin directory. It tries to scan to see if firefox plugins are installed as well. Which is why even though i didnt put a link over to the firefox plugins it seems to pick them up automatically (which is what I do not want) I dont want flock to see the firefox plugins. It should scan its own plugin directory and be done. Right now i have no plugins or links to the firefox directory but yet if i open flock and go about:plugins i can see all the plugins i have installed for my firefox installation. If i rename the firefox plugin director to something else then flocks reports no plugins install. This is how i know that its somehow scanning the firefox plugin directory as well. Any idea how to force flock to simply scan its own plugin directory and stop?
Both Firefox and Flock link to the same plugins directory, at least this would be the case according to the instructions that I have provided. You are making a link to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ directory. So does Firefox if installed correctly.
In other words, this link is just a shortcut to the same directory that Firefox links to. Your about:plugins between Firefox and Flock should look exactly identical according to these instructions.
Somewhere along the way, either you messed up, or misunderstood what these instructions mean. Flock is basically just a build of Firefox with some special extensions and features already installed.
I wish I could assist you further, but if you just do it exactly as I said, you will be fine.
How can I add my firefox add-ons to flock ?
Install them from the Flock site, or Google Flock extensions. Do you know the difference between plugins and extensions? Plugins are global and extensions are specific to profiles.
Brent, I’m having a trouble with flock in Gusty.
The text encoding in flock (Unicode-UTF8) is not working. I mean: as I am a Bangladeshi, I use several Bengali webs. & Bengali language uses UTF-8 to show texts correctly. But even if i set the character encoding to Unicode UTF-8, texts in the browser (including the UI/ bookmark names) are not showing appropriately.
Firefox shows correct, even flock in Windows also running without any problem. I searched the internet about this problem and found no solution.
Can you help me to to solve this problem, PLEASE? I’m dieing to use flock in Ubuntu.
If you can solve this, please mail me: iamshaon@gmail.com
I tried the same instruction with the new 1.1 beta and it didn’t work. It installs but when you click on the icon to make it work, it doesn’t. I would very much appreciate if you would provide a workaround to this. Thanks for sharing it.
Hi Brent - thanks for your instructions. Since I have Flock installed in my Home folder, I modified your instructions slightly to copy the Firefox plugins to my /home/username/flock/plugins folder. Once I did that, I immediately had Flash and Java working in Flock, without even the need to log out or relaunch Flock. By the way, I’m running Flock under Xubuntu 7.10 on my Asus Eee PC. Thanks again!
Regard,
Martin Gonzalvez
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