Firefox 3.6.6 and plugins [SOLVED]

[Ole Juul]

I just did a complete upgrade of my 8.04 installation and soon noticed that Firefox was unstable. After restarting it, it wouldn't resume properly and one plugin wouldn't update. Apart from that kafuffel, it now seems to work well - but the "Firefox-webdeveloper" plugin cannot be reloaded.

The message is "Web Developer 1.1.5 . . . Not compatible with with Firefox 3.6.6." Both the plugin and the browser are in the repositories and installable with apt-get. It seems that the repository has it's versions out of sync in this case. Does anyone have any information on this, or perhaps a solution?

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Firefox 3.6.6 and plugins

I stopped a long time ago installing extensions out of the repos, because of exactly this reason. Web Developer 1.1.6 is from may 19 2008, so 1.1.5 has to be even elder.
I always install from Mozilla's extensions pages. Never had any problem. The only thing is for a very few extensions you have to do a few extra things, for example when the extensions' default is looking for a pdf-reader on Windows.
I'm still running 8.04, but I think there's no reason you can't use the 'normal' extensions.
You can find Web Developer here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60/

[Telengard]

Re: Firefox 3.6.6 and plugins

I stopped a long time ago installing extensions out of the repos, because of exactly this reason.

Same here. It makes me wonder why there are packages for Firefox extensions in the Ubuntu repos at all. If a particular plugin won't work in Ubuntu's Firefox without some customization then maybe it needs packaging. In those cases the package ought to be maintained to work along with Ubuntu's Firefox, or else dropped from the repos.

Well, that's my (not necessarily informed) opinion anyway.

[Snowhog]

Re: Firefox 3.6.6 and plugins

The message is "Web Developer 1.1.5 . . . Not compatible with with Firefox 3.6.6." Both the plugin and the browser are in the repositories and installable with apt-get.

Why do it that way - apt-get? In FireFox > Tools > Add-Ons > Get Add-Ons, Web Developer 1.1.8 is available.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Firefox 3.6.6 and plugins

Why do it that way - apt-get? In FireFox > Tools > Add-Ons > Get Add-Ons, Web Developer 1.1.8 is available.

Actually I already had it installed (via firefox) and, other than upgrade, I didn't do anything at first. The message is in the "Get Add-ons" box and is greyed out and showed up that way right after I did the upgrade (with adept). I cannot click on either "Enable" or "Install" and it is stuck in that state.

I then went to the repositories to see what was there and to my surprise saw web-developer there. In an effort to fix things I have UNinstalled and REinstalled it from there but the situation is the same. Most recent step was to UNinstall from adept. It won't go away from the "Get Add-ons" box and I can't click on anything there.

[Goeroeboeroe]

Re: Firefox 3.6.6 and plugins

I had this kind of problems in the past. I can't remember if I was able to solve them or had to reinstall Firefox.

I don't know what you did try already, so maybe you tried some of these things already.
First of all I should make a copy of your .mozilla folder. I don't know if this is 'officially' recommended, but I've done this for years, and it always worked.
In your home folder there's a folder .mozilla (invisible). If you make a copy of that folder and something goes terribly wrong with your extensions, you can simply put the copy back. Then everything is again like it's now. (Actually I've always a back-up of .mozilla, because I do pretty weird things sometimes with Firefox, so I regularly need the back-up...)

Did you try to uninstall it in mozilla? There should be a button on the extension saying 'uninstall' (or something like that, my system is Dutch).

Did you try to run Firefox in safe-mode? If you start Firefox in konsole:

firefox --safe-mode

it runs without any extension, plug-in, etc. Maybe you can uninstall it in safe-mode.

If you right-click on the extension there's a menu entrance saying something like 'make compatible'. This forces the extension to be compatible with Firefox. After that you have to restart Firefox. The extension should be enabled after restart. Maybe it's possible to remove it when it's enabled.
It's possible you don't have an entrance to force compatibility. I don't think it's enabled by default. If you don't have this entry, you can install Mr Tech Toolkit: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/421/
After restart you can force compatibility.

If these things don't work the only thing I can think of is deleting your .mozilla folder. That's the situation after a fresh install of Firefox. You should of course first export your bookmarks: Bookmarks -> Manage bookmarks -> Import and make back-up -> ...
You can simply import them the same way.
(Maybe you knew all these things already, but I don't know how much you know...)

[Ole Juul]

Re: Firefox 3.6.6 and plugins

I had this kind of problems in the past. I can't remember if I was able to solve them or had to reinstall Firefox. . . .

Thanks for your suggestions. It was stuck and could not be removed from within FF. The browser "upgrade" was actually causing the response to be unworkably slow as well. A look at the CPU usage for FF showed a range from an acceptable <10% to a crazy >60%!

Right now I revisited the problem, and un-installed FF (and branding) and then re-installed it. That made the greyed out plugin go away and I could then re-install that. In addition, the whole browser is now fast again and CPU usage is almost nothing with only a few static windows open.

It seems that the upgrade is what caused the problem. Re-installing Firefox was the solution.