Many
people use at least one or two of the numerous extensions that are available for the
Firefox Web Browser. However, there are cases when your
favourite extension stops working when you upgrade Firefox to the latest version. This is usually
not a problem as many extensions will get upgraded quite soon after (or even before) a new
Firefox release is available.
However, what do you do when an extension has been abandoned by the original developer or if the developer is tardy in releasing an update? In many cases a quick hack can bring the offending extension back to life again - here's what you need to do...
The extensions you install reside in your Firefox profile area. Under Windows XP this will usually be in:
C:\Documents and Settings\[YOUR NAME]\Application Data\
Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[PROFILE ID]\extensions\
The [PROFILE ID] will be a bunch of random characters followed by .default if you haven't set up named profiles.
Under Linux you should find them in:
/usr/lib/firefox/extensions
(at least they are under Ubuntu - I presume they will be the same for other distros).
Under here will be an assortment of directories - one per extension. Sometimes the extension directory is identifiable but mostly these directories will be named as a string of HEX values. To identify which directory belongs to which extension, go into each directory and locate a file called install.rdf and open it up in a decent text editor. Warning: if you are a Windows user then do NOT use Windows Notepad or a wordprocessor to open the file as this will most likely corrupt it. If you are not sure that your text editor will not damage the file then make a copy of the file first. Some decent text editors include: TextPad, Crimson Editor, ConText or just Google for more. Under Linux you can use editors such as KEdit or Nano or, from a command line, use the more command to list out the file.
Once you have opened up install.rdf take a look at the contents and there will probably be several clues as to which extension this is. Next, if this is one of the extensions that is not running, locate a line containing:
em:maxVersion=
You will probably see that the version number that follows the equals sign refers to an earlier release of Firefox. Replace this with a number that is equal to or later than the version of Firefox that you are running and resave the file.
Now restart Firefox and see if your extension has miraculously been restored to life! In all the cases I've tried so far, it certainly has! I've brought Measure It and the rather indespensible Web Developer back to life using this method with no problem so far.
Now, I'm not guaranteeing that this method will work in all cases. There will be times when the new Firefox release (especially a major jump like version 1.5 to 2 or from 2 to 3) will have changed some internal processes that will render certain extensions inoperative but it's certainly worth trying if you are impatient to get your extensions working with the latest release.
