Chris Schuld’s Blog

I use the “HTML Validator” Firefox plugin daily. I found it does not work out of the box in Linux namely Fedora Core 6 and Fedora 7. You immediately get a HTML-rendered screen that states:

FATAL ERROR : The dynamic C library contained in the extension file could not be found

Getting rid of this message took me a few minutes of research and I never found a step-by-step HOW-TO for Fedora — so here goes!

Here is how you get rid of this message and get the plugin working in Fedora Core 6 or Fedora 7:

1. First, uninstall the plugin by clicking on Tools–>Add-ons and clicking uninstall
   
   
2. Second, close all instances of Firefox
3. Next, install three packages using yum
   • compat-libstdc++-296
   • compat-libstdc++-33
   • tidy

   yum install compat-libstdc++-296 compat-libstdc++-33 tidy

4. Reinstall the HTML Validator plugin
5. Restart Firefox, done!

HTML Validator should now be installed inside of Firefox on Fedora Core 6 or Fedora 7

Question: I just accidentally added a misspelled word to Firefox’s built in dictionary — how do I remove it?

This is a good question! Thankfully, someone at Mozilla decided the user dictionary should be stored in plain text and newline delimited. A big thank you from Chris on this one!

The only challenge is locating your Profile and then your personal / user dictionary file. The personal dictionary is called persdict.dat and lives in your Firefox Profile folder.

The Firefox Profile Folder is located in different places depending on what Operating System you are using:

If you are using Windows XP or Windows Vista you can quickly jump to the directory by typing “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\” into the run box (click on Start–>Run).

Once you have found your profile folder you need to edit the persdict.dat file. Using your favorite text editor open up that file and edit out / add in the words you desire.

You will need to restart Firefox before it will see any words you updated.