Make Old Extensions Work in Firefox 1.5

Filed in: Mozilla, Tips n Tricks — September 12th, 2005

I have reviewed the newly released Firefox 1.5 beta 1. It is great, however most of our “must have” extensions does not work on it yet. Here is a trick to make Firefox 1.0 extensions work in Firefox 1.5 (of course, this is only a temporary solution before your extensions upgrade.)

At location bar, enter: about:config This will show you a list of Firefox internal preferences.
Right click on the list, select New > String
At preference name enter “app.extensions.version” (without quotes).
Then, enter “1.0” (without quotes) as the value for app.extensions.version
Restart Firefox 1.5, then enable those disabled Firefox extensions.
Restart Firefox 1.5 again to active the extensions. Done.

Note: Some of the extensions are not working in Firefox 1.5 and caused errors when you enable them. We need to disable them for Firefox to work properly.

[ Thanks to Patrick who tells us this trick in his comment ]

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It's pretty good way of making Firefox compatible with older addons

Replication Guide

Wow, that was easy. Thanks. I wonder why they don't make that the default option?

Marko

I have been looking for an Biet-O-Zilla update for the latest firefox update released on the 1st Feb 2006. Finding this has enabled the latest firefox to use this great bit of ebay software. There are instructions to muck about with various Biet-O-Zilla files to get it working on the extention download site. I tried without getting it to work. This far simpler and gets the job done. Nice one many many thanks

LcF

David: ya... I am surprised! :)

David

wow, you got linked by lifehacker and steve rubel!

Dave

The "Nightly Tester Tools" extension has revived 15 extensions that did not work in Firefox 1.5. I run 31 unique extensions.

There were several steps, which I have outlined for you to follow:

1) Install from: https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo....
2) Restart Firefox (use File>Exit)
3) Open the 'Extensions' window (Tools>Extensions), and click the new "Make all compatible" button. [This step immediately made compatible 10 of my 15 non-functioning extensions].
4) Uninstall all of the remaning non-compatible extensions. Make a list, because you will need to reinstall! [In my case, "unistalled" user preferences were later restored; specifically I had to uninstall DictionarySearch, but when it was eventually reinstalled my preferences restored themselves]
5) Reinstall each non-compatible extension. Check the new "Install Nightly Tester Tools to override compatibility" option on the 'Software Installation' window. [Most extensions can be found at https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/?applicat...

Hope this helps.

LcF

Thank you for the thunderbird trick, Dougal Campbell.

Dougal Campbell

BTW, this trick works for Thunderbird, too. Quit TB, find its "prefs.js" file, and add this:

user_pref("app.extensions.version", "1.0");

Restart TB, re-enable your extensions (right-click). Quit, then restart again.

Ahmad Haziq

ok, ok....:) Now i understand how...Thanx

Andrew

I've downloaded another extension that is supposed to 'force' the extension to be enabled. It's called 'Nightly Tester Tools'. So far it works !!

LcF

wait for the extensions upgrade.
I do not recommend beginner to use this trick.

Andrew

No I mean none of the extensions I had can be enabled ( I have over 10). The "enabled" option is just grayed and cannot be clicked.

LcF

As I said, it does not work for all extensions. If you found that it does not work, disable back the extensions.

Andrew

Me too. Followed your instructions. But cannot enable the extensions.

LcF

the extensions should working if you enabled them. Please tell me more details.

Ahmad Haziq

Hello Liew. I have a problem here. I've enabled all the extensions but nothing is working. Could you tell me how? Please include the details...:)