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."

A bit less strict disabling rules, please

[Rah'Dick]

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?

Re:Do not do this

[BZ]

I would fully expect IETab to crash, in general, unless you're using it with the exact version of Gecko it was compiled against (or one completely binary-compatible with it, like the security releases are).

Re:Do not do this

[Myen]

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).

Re:Do not do this

[__aabvlw4075]

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).

Re:Is this a good idea?

[DigitalisAkujin]

Personally, I've been using the betas of Firefox 3 as main because I couldn't stand Firefox 2. This RC1 release is heaven. You guys think this release is buggy when really there's just a few bugs to fix and most of them on foreign versions or very specific cases equally in windows, linux, and mac based on the ratio of installs.

Re:Do not do this

[ta bu shi da yu]

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.

How to test compatability before upgrading?

[egghat]

I'm on OS X and FF3 doesn't allow a parallel installation of two Firefoxes.

Is there a way to test all my installed extension in advance?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I couldn't find anything with googling.

Finding out incompatibilities in advance?

[Pahalial]

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?

Re:This is really, really stupid

[Tim C]

practically everything in a modern web browser behaves like it's single-threaded?

Yes it does, hence the entire browser stalls when one tab is busy for some reason.

Restoring compatability

[clownface]

> [Those who do] get the fix working will have
> to remove the code from the prefs.js file once
> the stable Firefox comes out

Not true. There is highly visible UI in the Firefox 3 AddOns Window which lets you to turn compatability checking on again.

Re:Finding out incompatibilities in advance?

[jalefkowit]

Check the extension's listing on addons.mozilla.org [mozilla.org]. The site checks what version of FF you are using, so if you're browsing with FF3 and you look up an extension that hasn't been updated, it'll say "this add-on is for older versions of Firefox".

Location Bar

[Toonol]

I just installed Firefox 3.0 this week. I'm generally happy with it, but is there a fix for the horrible location bar auto-complete yet? My jaw dropped when I saw it pop up... what an ugly, ugly, feature. It seems like a pet change of the creators, too, so they don't have any option to turn it off in about:config.