R-2.1.0 search engine works with mozilla browser but not firefox

I'm running R-2.1.0 on a Linux box and found that the HTML search 
engine help would not work with Firefox 1.0.3 but would work with 
Mozilla 1.7.7.  I have Java Runtime Environment 1.5.0_02 

installed.  

With Firefox, when I launch help.start() and click to the search 
engine, it brings up the first page with "Applet 

SearchEngine started" 

in the status bar, but clicking on one of the contents entries or 
trying to search for a term does nothing.

It works with Firefox 1.0.3 for me on Fedora Core 3.

Please consult the appropriate manual as linked from the 
search page: this is a configuration issue local to you.  One 
irritating part of FC3's updates is that they do not (at 
least for me) copy the plugins across, so I had manually to 
fix up my Firefox 1.0.3 update yesterday.  Sounds like your 
plugin is not set up correctly.

I followed the advice posted at
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/java.html#Linux to install the JRE
plugin correctly:

"If you installed the JRE 5.0 RPM, this plugin is
/usr/java/j2re1.5.0/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so - and to
install it for Mozilla (including Mozilla Firefox), do the following:

    * Open a terminal
    * Change to your Mozilla (or Mozilla Firefox) plugins directory
    * Issue the following command: ln -s
/usr/java/j2re1.5.0/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

Important! If you install your JRE in a different way (self extracting
package, debian package, etc), libjavaplugin_oji.so will quite likely be
in a different location. Do not just blindly use the command listed
above!" 

All of this checked out for me, and Firefox still won't work with R's
search engine.  Yes, I understand this isn't an R issue per se, but I
don't know where to turn. . .

Scott Waichler