Slashdot Mirror
Let Older Add-Ons Work With Firefox 3.0
mask.of.sanity informs us of a hack that allows old add-ons to work with Firefox 3.0. Short form: in about:config, create a new boolean and set extensions.checkCompatibility to false. "The fix, which requires a little boolean creativity, great for anyone not afraid of taking risks. The idea is to stop Firefox checking its version history, allowing defunct extensions to work... [Those who do] get the fix working will have to remove the code from the prefs.js file once the stable Firefox comes out, but will enjoy their [favorite extensions] in the meantime."
I always wondered why some extensions got disabled from one minor bugfix release to the next. Has the underlying API been changed so much, that the extension really isn't going to work anymore or is the extension's author just being a bit restrictive with the "max. version allowed" setting?
If I remember correctly, one of the top crashes for Firefox 3 betas was... people whole force-enabled Google Toolbar.
Yes, top crash.
This preference is generally not useful unless you know how to deal with the fallout (including figuring out what problems are due to extensions and which ones are not, and possibly fixing things locally).
This isn't about making extensions compatible, it's about forcing Firefox to allow you to use extensions that claim not to be compatible, but very well might be. Major breakage certainly could occur, but I find it worth the risk. Many extensions that I was using with beta5 claimed not to work in rc1. Forcing them to load anyway has been very helpful, and they have all worked perfectly without causing any problems (as far as I can tell).
While it is fine to disable the compatibility checking, my concern is that if enough people disable it they might start expecting the Mozilla devs to actually implement workarounds to 2.0 compat problems in v3. That way leads to many, many problems. Just ask Microsoft.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
On that note, is there any -easy- way to check addon compatibility before upgrading to FF3, i.e. other than looking each addon up again? As I understand it they all have a builtin version range, why can't I just go to my addon list and see the compatibility of each addon?
Stuff.