Google Maps Problem (Street View does not work)

I continue to have the same problem with Street View under Snow Leopard! Worked fine with OS 10.5.8. Doesn't work for me in my main (administrator) account under 10.6. However, I did log into a guest account and Street View worked fine from the guest account.

When it works in the guest account, it works in both Safari and Firefox.

When it doesn't work in my main (administrator) account, it doesn't work in either Safari or Firefox.

I've tried:

1) Completely reinstalling Snow Leopard.
2) Turned off Pop-Up Blocking in Safari.
3) Reset all of Safari's settings except cookies and saved names and passwords.
4) Manually deleted ALL cookies with the word "google" in them (including three that were maps.google.com) and then quit Safari and restarted it.

None of these fixed Street View in my administrator account. And, frankly, making changes to any preferences or cookies or caches in Safari can't really be the solution because the problem occurs in Firefox too. Firefox has it OWN set of caches and cookies.

FWIW, I have only run Firefox maybe 6 times before this and that was only for a minute or two each time. I don't even have my bookmarks set in Firefox nor have I ever changed any of its preferences. It's about as close to a "raw" install of Firefox as you can get. Yet, Firefox still doesn't work with Street View in my administrator account.

I honestly don't think this has anything to do with either Firefox or Safari. I think it is something at a deeper system level. Something that only gets used, loaded or set when I boot my administrator account and not a guest account.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what it is.

FWIW (so others having the problem can compare): Mac Pro 1,1 with 5GB of RAM and the Radeon X1900 video card. Two DVI monitors (23" Cinema Display and 17" Samsung Syncmaster).

Mark

Message was edited by: Mark Booth2

Again, for comparison with those that are also having the problem..

1) I installed Rosetta when I installed Snow Leopard.
2) I installed Quicktime 7 when I installed Snow Leopard.

Other than that, I did the standard (default) install of Snow Leopard.

Mark

One thing all the browsers may have in common is the plug-ins.

May be we have two versions of the plug-ins. One version in the system-wide repository and another version in the per user repository.

But I don't know which directory to look in.

Thanks,

Roberto

Just to confirm what has been observed: I have been experiencing the Street View issue in all browsers after upgrading the SL.

Additionally, I followed the above tip that suggested enabling the GUEST account in SL and using that GUEST account to access Google Maps Street View would work. And, it did.

Fast account switching, between, GUEST and regular account, confirmed that Street View worked properly from the GUEST account, but did not from my regular user account.

Thinking this to be a problem with Preferences in my regular user account, I deleted all the Macromedia Flash preferences I could find in the Library of my regular account.

Still no joy.

Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Obviously, a "plain vanilla" GUEST account does NOT encounter the problem. But the question remains, what needs to be deleted in my regular account to achieve success?

All I can say is, Thank God I'm not the ONLY one experiencing this problem! 🙂 But, unfortunately, there appears to be just few enough of us to make me worry that Apple isn't checking into it too seriously.

I E-mailed the details of my problem to Apple using the OS X Feedback site:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I urge others experiencing the problem to do the same thing.

Mark

Also, no problems here.

Someone mentioned plugins. Could be. I don't know what is in a standard install, but here is what I have (/Library/Internet Plug-ins):
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
flashplayer.xpt
nsIQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
DirectorShockwave.plugin
Flash Player.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
Google Earth Plugin.plugin
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
Silverlight.plugin
NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.webplugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin

Obviously I regret my choice of words here, since it appears it wasn't a server issue after all. Mea culpa!

Still, we can see clearly that neither is it a Snow Leopard issue per se, since it only occurs with a small portion of users, and more importantly it isn't observed when using a guest account. Something in your main account is conflicting with Google Maps.

Perhaps an unsupported third-party Safari add-on?

Mark Booth2 wrote:
All I can say is, Thank God I'm not the ONLY one experiencing this problem! 🙂 But, unfortunately, there appears to be just few enough of us to make me worry that Apple isn't checking into it too seriously.

It isn't just the small number of people, it's the fact that the problem goes away when using a guest account. That says definitively that it is not a Snow Leopard issue per se, but rather something in your main account that's conflicting with Google Maps street view.

Hope this makes sense: the guest account step has helped us rule out definitively that it's a general Snow Leopard issue.

Do any of you use any third-party Safari add-ons? Something to, say, change the interface or help with web development? I suppose it could even be something as innocuous as a wayward plug-in.

PBG4Ai17inch wrote:
Thinking this to be a problem with Preferences in my regular user account, I deleted all the Macromedia Flash preferences I could find in the Library of my regular account.

Actually Google Maps doesn't use Flash; rather, it uses a combination of JavaScript, XML, and other technologies collectively called AJAX, which are all built-into the browser and don't require a plug-in.

Perhaps another plug-in is getting in the way somehow, though? Or a web development tool of some kind that's interfering with all your installed browsers?

Eric,

The Google Maps pages appear to be AJAX as you say, however, once a Street View window opens, Flash is in there somewhere. If you control click on a Street View window, a Flash modal dialog box appears. It would appear Flash somehow figures into the panoramic navigation of the Street View window.

At this point I'm stymied as to where to look next. I snooped around in Safari using the DEVELOP, ERROR CONSOLE -- found some 403 "errors". Perhaps this relates to permissions? I'm in way over my head.

Here is info about Street View from the Google code website:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/services.html#Streetview

**

The GStreetviewPanorama Object

Street View images are supported through use of the GStreetviewPanorama object, which provides an API interface to a Street View Flash® viewer. To incorporate Street View into your Maps API application, you will need to follow these simple steps:

Create a container (usually a

Eric, I've spent HOURS trying to figure out what is causing the conflict. Here's the contents of internet plug-ins folder:

DRM Plugin.bundle
Flash Player.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin
Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.webplugin
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
NP-PPC-DIr-Shockwave
nslQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin
RealPlayer Plugin.plugin

That's all of them. And here are the login items for my administrator account:

iTunesHelper
SpeechSynthesisServer
Airport Base Station Agent

That all of those.

I have three apps that I am wondering if they make ties into the system in such a way as to possible cause problems when they aren't running. They are:

Audio Hijack Pro
VideoBox
iShowU

Each of those apps are designed to allow you capture sound and/or video that's playing on your Mac. Between the three of them, I can capture ANY sound or ANY video being displayed by a website. So, I'm sure they tie into the system in some sneaky way. But I'm uncertain if they do this when they aren't running. I don't find any plugins for them and there's no startup (login) items for them.

Now, I know Audio Hijack Pro isn't compatible with Snow Leopard (the other two are). But, again, I have the problem with Street View when these three programs are not loaded or running.

In addition, I brought up Activity Monitor with just Safari loaded to try to see if I could catch any app or background process running that might be conflicting. I didn't see anything to be suspicious about in Activity Monitor.

Man, this is a TOUGH one! Something about my administrator account is causing the conflict but it continues to baffle me.

My sincere thanks to you and everyone else that has tried to help.

Mark

By Jove you're right -- Flash is used to display the panoramic image once street view is open! Well done!

So we know it's your Flash plug-in. Which version are you using? The 10.0.23 that came with Snow Leopard? I've already upgraded to the 10.0.32 version available at Adobe's site. Perhaps you could try that?

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

It's vanishingly unlikely that everyone with the 10.0.23 player is seeing the street view problem, since Google checks their products rigorously against new browser versions, etc., but perhaps something in your installation went awry, and installing the new 10.0.32 will correct it.

After the initial Snow Leopard upgrade, Street View would not work, nor has it worked after I upgraded to the current Flash version. In fact I did this twice -- unsure if the first upgrade was in error. No Luck. This failure occurs while logged in to my primary USER account, and occurs in both Safari and Foxfire.

What is odd is that Street View works just fine in either browser if I Login as a GUEST -- which of course uses the same javascript, css, and Flash. The primary differences as a Guest are preferences, and the general permission scheme of the GUEST account itself.

Message was edited by: PBG4Ai17inch