I can't play MP3 files directly on Firefox

Question

I have a laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium installed, which I had to reinstall recently due to hard drive problems. Before that I had no problems using the native Firefox MP3 player to play audio files directly. If I clicked a link to a MP3 file, it would open in a new tab and start playing. But now, a window pops up asking me if I want to open it (with Windows Media Player by default) or download it. If I go to about:config media.windows-media-foundation.enabled is set to true, so it should work properly. There's no problem with my MP3 codecs since I can play MP3 files directly on Windows without problems. Here's the song I'm currently trying to play, and which I could play before reinstalling:

http://www.vocacionpasionista.com/Novedades/Un%20deseo%20de%20paz.mp3

I really need to get it working again, is there any way to do it?

I'm using Firefox 24 btw.

EDIT:

According to this blog post both MP3 and H.264 are decoded through Media Foundation. I can play H.264 video, so I guess it's just a MP3 problem. I can't play MP3 audio on Web pages with the HTML5 tag either.

EDIT 2:

It's not working on another laptop with Windows 7 Ultimate x86 either, but it works in the desktop of a friend of mine also with Win 7 x64 and Firefox 24.

Solution 1

I answer to myself:

After asking twice in the Mozilla support forums I got the answer. As suggested to me here I installed Service Pack 1 and that did the trick. Now it works without a problem.

Solution 2

Have you tried to set the default program to open .mp3?

Go to Tools > Options > Applications and search .mp3

You will get two results, Go for the one with the type <audio/x-mpeg> and select Firefox as default...

... funny thing is, I don't have it. Rather, I have the QuickTime 7.6.9 plugin instead. Maybe that is your problem, as I haven't heard of Firefox having a default media player.

Your post refers only to Firefox for Android and Firefox OS, not Firefox for Desktops (that I assume you're having, due to the windows-7 flag). Although, the beginning of the post does refer that the feature is present on the Nightly builds of Firefox...

UPDATE: After some searching, I found this post on Stack Overflow (Why doesn't Firefox support mp3 file format in < audio >). As it turns out, Firefox has only support for HTML5-based .mp3 files.

Comments

[DaRk_St0rM]

Thanks for your answer. I've already trying setting the default program to Firefox, but I get the same window. That post was written on January and says they were beginning to implement it on Firefox Desktop and you had to manually set "media.windows-media-foundation.enabled" to true, but since then it has been added to stable (don't know in which version, but it worked for me without any changes on some version between 20 and 24). EDIT: I had already read that post, but I swear I was able to play that file in the link directly...

[Doktoro Reichard]

I have also seen some posts that lead me to Windows 8 and the need to have a Media Pack installed (because there are versions without it) doesn't seem to be your case though.

[Doktoro Reichard]

As of now, I can't test it properly because I have Windows XP (that seems to not support this feature) and Quicktime is superimposing on all settings.

[Doktoro Reichard]

This Microsoft blog post does show the way the media player looks like... in HTML-5. Maybe there just is no direct support for plain, simple, mp3 files.

[DaRk_St0rM]

As I said before, I'm completely sure that I could play that file before. Actually, when playing a file like that (at least for the internally supported formats like Ogg, but I guess it's the same for mp3) what Firefox does is create a HTML5 page with that audio embedded so it shows the player and plays it.For example if I open this ogg file,right-click and select "inspect element" I get this, so I think that's actually supported...