Firefox 1.5 not seeing java

Question

I need to get java working with Firefox 1.5 because I have to browse to site: http://www.hikinghq.net which uses java for navigation. I have read, I think, all pleas for help on this topic here and I still don't see a solution. I have java on my rig here and it works just fine with jinchess, but not with the web browsers.
Does anyone have a simple, understandable, correct method to get java (and Flash) working individually with both Firefox 1.5 and Konqueror?
Let's fix this problem. We can do it !

Answer 1

Cerebral wrote:
Just a note, you can find out exactly where packages are installed to by doing:
pacman -Ql packagename
eg.
$ pacman -Ql j2re | grep mozilla
j2re /opt/mozilla/
j2re /opt/mozilla/lib/
j2re /opt/mozilla/lib/plugins/
j2re /opt/mozilla/lib/plugins/libjavaplugin_oji.so
So, make sure that /opt/mozilla/lib/plugins/libjavaplugin.oji.so is there -- that's where Firefox should expect its plugins.
Not sure I follow the pipe 'grep mozilla', but here's where I am.
su
#go to the mozilla plugins directory
cd /opt/mozilla/lib/plugins/
# List the files:
[root@underground plugins]# ls -al
total 2054
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     160 2006-03-01 09:19 .
drwxr-xr-x  6 root root     192 2006-02-11 14:58 ..
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root     856 2006-02-11 15:09 flashplayer.xpt
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 2096844 2006-02-11 15:09 libflashplayer.so
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root      50 2006-03-01 09:19 libjavaplugin_oji.so
[root@underground plugins]#
#notice that libjavaplugin_oji.so is a link to -> /opt/java/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so
# which is (guessing here..) incorrect.
# So we find java
[root@underground plugins]# find / -name 'java'
/opt/java
/opt/java/jre/bin/java
/opt/mozilla/include/firefox-1.5.0.1/java
/opt/openoffice/share/Scripts/java
[root@underground plugins]#   
# and we discover the file we must link to at:
[root@underground plugins]# ls -al /opt/java/jre/plugin/i386/ns7
total 132
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     88 2006-03-01 06:51 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root    104 2006-03-01 06:51 ..
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 135084 2005-11-10 13:44 libjavaplugin_oji.so
[root@underground plugins]#
#and here is where it bombs!
cd /opt/mozilla/lib/plugins/
[root@underground plugins]# rm libjavaplugin_oji.so
[root@underground plugins]# ln -s /opt/java/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so .
Still doesn't work. Any clue as to why?