On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Michael Rueger wrote:

> The linux version of the plugin works, but the browser primitives in the
> linux VM fail. If some kind soul would like to have a look at this? :-)

Who called my name? ;-)

Okay, the primitives simply weren't found because they're not listed in
our beloved new platform.exports file. Also, the FilePlugin must be
loaded. The current Unix VM has all modules except BitBlt external, so
it's easiest to put all wanted modules (e.g., FilePlugin.so) into
~/.netscape/squeak and set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to this directory before
starting Netscape.

Then, both the "browser" and "hangman" examples work. Although, I have to
click once before the browser window / hangman app is displayed?! I
appreciate any bug reports. Going Full Screen still seems buggy, for
example.

I moved the sources to SourceForge (new Unix_2.8/BrowserPlugin directory),
and fixed the support code. It'd be great if someone could try these
(building a new VM and the browser plugin) and tell me if it works and if
the instructions in the README are sufficient. The general concept is
briefly described at Michael's page:
http://ifsl.mb.uni-magdeburg.de/~michael/plugin/plugin.htm

Michael: I changed the image name to "SqueakPlugin.image" like Windows
does, so you should reflect this in your installation description. One
tip: the EMBED tag's PLUGINSPAGE parameter can be used to direct Netscape
to a special download page instead of the default download page if the
plugin is not installed. And another one: if you associate .sts files with
a MIME type they can be loaded full-window without an HTML page. At least
the Unix plugin handles this ;-)

#
# .htaccess file for Apache webserver
#
AddType application/x-squeak-source sts 
AddType application/x-squeak-object sqo
AddDescription "Squeak source" *.sts
AddDescription "Squeak object" *.sqo

(I did this at
http://wwwisg.CS.Uni-Magdeburg.De/~bert/squeak/plugin/test/plugintest.sts)

> Caution:
> the auto launch examples (class, hangman) use unsigned launch scripts
> (the .sts files).
> As these auto launch scripts could include some malicious code, the
> current auto launch image poses a potential risk.

But all platforms now use the file sandbox, so at least there should be no
way to harm the disk. In Unix it's not even easy to overwrite the VM
(while in Windows it is, IIRC). 

OTOH, if someone installed SqueakFFIPrims.so in an accessable library path
it's a huge security risc. IMHO the BrowserVM should have all necessary
plugins compiled in. Or, be restricted to load plugins from the VM
directory only.

-- Bert