Notes, links and conversation

You really want to install this Firefox extension but you can’t? Because it’s not compatible with your browser (screen shot)? Or you have upgraded your browser and some of your favourite add-ons got disabled? Happens a lot with more exotic extensions, or if you’re using a minority browser like Seamonkey, (the old) Mozilla, or (the brand new) Flock. However, you do not need to despair:

More often than not, the extension is compatible, but the developer hasn’t tested it yet, or at least not updated the version information in the .xpi install file. But that one, you can do for yourself.

How to change browser version information for a .xpi file?

Firefox extension install files are in fact just zip files with another extension. So here’s how to proceed (on Windows, but probably analogously for other systems):

1. Right-click the link to the .xpi install file and “Save As”
2. Rename the xpi file to .zip
3. Extract the zip file
4. Edit install.rdf with your favourite text editor

Typically, you’ll either need to:

Update the em:maxVersion element in the em:targetApplication description for your browser (change e.g. 0.8 to 1 in the example):

<!-- Flock -->
<em:targetApplication>
  <Description>
    <em:id>{a463f10c-3994-11da-9945-000d60ca027b}</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.4</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>0.8</em:maxVersion>
  </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

Or insert the missing “em:targetApplication” browser description if your browser is not listed:

1. Copy the lines above from<em:targetApplication> to </em:targetApplication>
2. Paste them after the last </em:targetApplication> in the file
3. Change “Flock” in the example to your browser name and the long (”guid“) em.id element to one of these:
   

   Firefox	{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}
   Mozilla Suite	{86c18b42-e466-45a9-ae7a-9b95ba6f5640}
   SeaMonkey	{92650c4d-4b8e-4d2a-b7eb-24ecf4f6b63a}
   Netscape Browser	{3db10fab-e461-4c80-8b97-957ad5f8ea47}
   Flock Browser	{a463f10c-3994-11da-9945-000d60ca027b}

4. Update the the em:maxVersion number again to at least your current browser version

That’s it! All you have to do now is zip up those files again with the changed install.rdf, rename the .zip file to .xpi and just drag and drop the .xpi file in a browser window…

And what if the extension does make my browser crash?

If your browser crashes before you can even uninstall (via Tools… Add-ons), have a look the extensions folder for your user account. That should be something like:

C:\Documents and Settings\[your-username]\Application Data\[Flock/Browser,Mozilla/Firefox]\Profiles\[somehash.default]\extensions

Find out the folder for the misbehaving extension (by checking name, modified date or contents), and simply delete it. Your browser will start up again normally next time.

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This entry was posted in Tech, WebWatch on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 23:41 and tagged as: browsers, compatibility, extensions, firefox, flock, hack, mozilla, seamonkey, versioning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.