Bug 76698

Description of Problem:

Mysteriously enough when "About Plug-ins" under "Help" was chosen
Mozilla was showing a blank page although this worked as expected
elsewhere.

A cause for this problem turned out to be as follows; if there
exists ~/.netscape with a user profile in it and a Javascript is
there turned off then mozilla picks that up and "About Plug-ins"
comes blank.  That would be not that bad in itself if not that
small catch that turning on Javascript (surprisingly an "Advanced"
operation) has rather erratic results and sometimes plugins do
show up after that and sometimes do not.  Also changes in plugins
configurations (say after /etc/pluggerrc was changed due to an
installation of a new version or because some edits were done in
this file) will be either not picked up or things will be messed
up (double entries, etc.).


The only sure way to fix these bogosities seems to be a removal of
~/.mozilla/appreg file so it will be regenerated.  This would be not
that bad in itself, if somewhat obscure, if not that nasty detail that
after deleting this binary blob mozilla insists on "converting"
profiles again, with no escape hatch, and thus clobbers what one had
already customized in settings, bookmarks, etc.  No "conversion",
no startup.

The other surprise is if Mozilla was showing a blank plugins page then
Galeon, which apparently is using the same info, may do the same even
if Javascript there is turned-on.  After turning on Javascript in
Mozilla and showing plugins list Galeon seems to pick up even if
Javascript in Mozilla is turned off again.  Strange traps....