Remove 32-bit plugin warning with 64-bit Firefox 4/SharePoint 2010

If you are using the 64 bit version of Firefox 4 with SharePoint 2010 you have probably noticed the annoying alert bar at the top of your window that says:

“This page requires a plugin that can only run in 32-bit mode. Restart in 32-bit mode.”

On every. Single. Page. I learned to live with it for a while, but it became really annoying when it would shift the elements on the page a few seconds after load time, sometimes causing me to click the wrong thing. I came up empty handed after searching the internets so I set out into the world of Firefox’s about:config to find a solution.

Here’s how to fix the problem:

Type about:config in your address bar in Firefox. If it’s your first time in here you’ll get a warning to let you know that you could break things. Understand the risks and continue. Next you’re going to want to search this long list of settings for “x86″ and find “dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.x86_64″. Double click this setting to flip the boolean value from “true” to “false”. Now restart your browser and you should no longer see that warning when browsing a SharePoint 2010 site.

I have not noticed anything not working as a result of this change but I’d like to hear if you come across any problems.

Update: I did discover some problems with Flash not being properly displayed on other sites. Since changing the flag described above in the about:config settings and restarting your browser is not something you’ll want to do frequently, check out this post on how to run multiple instances of Firefox: https://devongovett.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/multiple-firefox-mac/

I now have two instances running, one with the x86_64 flag set to true (for general web use) and one with x86_64 flag set to false (for SharePoint 2010).

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