i am trying to install jce editor onto a local host but when i attempt to install the plugin the screen goes blank, any ideas how i can get this to be installed as this is a miles better editor?
Does this happen with all components / plugins you try to install? Check your PHP installation and configuration - the problem is most likely not with the plugin but deeper in your platform.
Damnit ... OK ... are you certain you have absolutely the latest version? A new one was released 2 days ago.
Aside from that, still looking at your platform - is it possible (however unlikely) that your successful installs were from .gz files and that your installer is hanging on the .zip? i.e. do you have both .gz and .zip support compiled into your local version of PHP?
Go to your Joomla Admin Console, Help >> System Info >> PHP Information
Check out the installed libraries (scroll straight to the bottom to check for Zip and Zlib).
There are 6 compression libraries available for PHP - the most common I've come across are:
Bzip2
Zip
Zlib
For Joomla, you preferably want to have Zip and Zlib so that you have the most common bases (.zip, .gz) covered. I believe that Zlib is a requirement for Zip anyways.
No - Joomla can only use what you have compiled into your PHP build.
The quick way around this problem is to unzip your zip, and re-archive it as a .gz - then you won't have any problems ... but you're going to have to do this for every single .zip you want to upload.