Make your old extensions work with Firefox 1.5 beta and more

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Mozilla, Open Source, Browser Tips

Make your old extensions work with Firefox 1.5 beta and more - Today's Browser Tip

by Jordan Running Sep 20th 2005

If you installed Firefox 1.5 beta 1 you probably found that many of your extensions quit working. While some of them are indeed incompatible with the new Firefox, most of them just need a little prodding. Nightly Tester Tools is an extension for Firefox that does a lot of stuff mostly useful to people who use—as the name implies—nightly builds, but it also includes a feature that's very useful for the rest of us: It lets you force Firefox to believe any extension is compatible with whatever version you're running, and lets you install "incompatible" extensions, too.

Like I said, some extensions really are incompatible with 1.5b and will mess things up, so obviously use Nightly Tester Tools at your own risk. If you're using the beta, though, you're probably already used to living on the edge.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jon said 4:10AM on 9-21-2005

Another way of making extensions work with 1.5beta is to save teh xpi on your computer (save link as...) and then open it with a zip program (I did it in win XP by changing the extension to .zip and changing back after) and then opening the file install.rdf. This XML file has a couple of tags that limit which versions it can work with. This example is taken from the flashgot extension (which works with the beta)

1.0
1.6

While some (like flashgot) have 1.6 as the maxVersion, others will still have 1.0.6 or 1.1 - if this is the case, edit the maxVersion to 1.6 - don't try to be smart and put in 5 to future-proof yourself, Firefox is supposed not to parse a maximum version that does not exist.

Save the file, make sure it has a .xpi extension and drag it onto an open firefox window. The extensions manager will open up and you know the process from there!

DISCLAIMER: As above, doing this could seriously screw with your firefox installation - though if you're willing to use a Beta 1 you probably either know or don't care!

Jon said 4:14AM on 9-21-2005

Oops, I didnt know how this thing strips out tags. here we go again - hope this actually works!

The example xml code is
<em:minVersion>1.0</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>1.6</em:maxVersion>

The tag names (if the above does not work) are minVersion and maxVersion - use your favourite editor to search for the string "min" or "max" to find them.

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