How to Upgrade Old Firefox extensions to be compatible with Firefox 3

Posted by Abbas ||

June 20, 2008 ||

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Upgrade Firefox extensions for Firefox 3

Few extensions cannot be installed on the latest release of Firefox only because of the lable value in install.rdf and others because they need to be completely re-written. I upgraded to Firefox 3 and one of my extensions was disabled due to compatibility issues. Here is what I did to install the same extension and get it up and running on Firefox 3.

Warning: Please backup your Firefox profile before you go ahead with the following steps. These setps worked for me, they might not work for you. Backup your Firefox profile to be safe.

Follow the steps to change "maxVersion" value in install.rdf

Step 1: Un-install the extension
Step 2: Locate the .XPI file of the extension on your hard disk
Step 3: Unzip .XPI file using any compression software (I Used WinRAR)
Step 4: Open install.rdf file in Notepad or WordPad
Step 5: Locate the string "<em:maxVersion>2.0</em:maxVersion>" and change its value from 2.0 to 4.0 or more. Note: Value in the example is 2.0, this could be different in your case, change it to 4.0 or above.
Step 6: Save install.rdf and zip the install.rdf with the remaining extension files.
Step 7: Change the .ZIP extension to .XPI
Step 8: Now try installing the extension

If you see an error "will not be installed because it does not provide secure updates" at the time of installation, please follow the steps mentioned below and try to install the extension again.

Step 1: Type "about:config" in your Firefox browser’s address bar
Step 2: Create a boolean with name "extensions.checkUpdateSecurity" and set its value to "false"
Step 3: Install the extension again.

Good Luck!

Tags: Compatible Firefox Extensions, FireFox, Upgrade Firefox Extensions

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