Make Your Own Flock Extensions
Filed in: Mozilla, Open Source — October 23rd, 2005
I ported a few Flock extensions from Firefox extensions. You may be wondering on how to port your favorite Firefox extensions to Flock. It is quite simple. Let me explain the steps to you.
- Download (do not install) the Firefox extension you want to port to Flock. Mozilla Update is a good Firefox extension repository.
- Change the file extension from ".xpi" to ".zip", and then extract the file into a folder.
Reference: Viewing and Changing Windows File Extensions
- Open "install.rdf" with a text editor (e.g: notepad).
- Look for "</em:targetApplication>" (without quotations).
- Paste the following code right below that line:
XML:
-
<!-- Flock -->
-
<em :targetApplication>
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<description>
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<em :id>{a463f10c-3994-11da-9945-000d60ca027b}</em>
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<em :maxVersion>6.02</em>
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<em :minVersion>0.2</em>
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</description>
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</em>
Tips: The strange text string is the program ID of Flock browser. The above code tells Flock that, "Hey! I am compatible with you!" (ok, the code is a cheating one.
) -
- Save the "install.rdf" file
- Zip the folder. You will get a .zip file.
- Rename the zip file extension from ".zip" to ".xpi".
- Drag & drop the .xpi file into your Flock browser in order to install the Flock extension.
- Restart your Flock browser.
- Done.
In a nutshell, the process goes like this:
Firefox extension -> rename to zip -> unzip -> edit "install.rdf" -> zip -> rename file extension to xpi -> Flock extension
My two cents
I am not sure about the amount of Firefox extension authors who are willing to update their extensions for Flock. You may wait for them, or do it yourself according to the steps shown here.
Please note that this is a cheap hack. There are some extensions that do not work properly with Flock even when they are successfully installed (example: SessionSaver).
I hope that you will enjoy more in using Flock with your favorite extensions installed. 
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October 23rd, 2005 at 2:10 am
SWEET!
Nice one Liew!
October 23rd, 2005 at 2:30 am
[...] You may wondering how to port your favorite Firefox extensions to Flock. It is quite simple. I tell you the steps here. read more | digg story [...]
October 23rd, 2005 at 12:19 pm
LiewCF, this might actually help you more : http://adminid.com/flock/
You know, then you wouldn’t have to go thru all the trouble messing around with files. It can be dangerous you know, especially when the next n00b comes around your blog and thinks it’s kewl to hack their FF extensions.
Thanks for the tip tho
October 23rd, 2005 at 1:13 pm
Thank you, Chewxy.
I submited my works to adminid.com/flock
October 23rd, 2005 at 4:17 pm
Excellent tip.
October 24th, 2005 at 7:03 am
[...] UPDATE: Well, I’m an iddiot and get all the code to display right for this. Besides Liew has a much better explination on his website. You can get it by clicking here. [...]
October 25th, 2005 at 2:21 pm
If you check out my website (frobba.com) I wrote a windows utility that does this super easily. I’m working on an OSX version.
October 26th, 2005 at 7:44 am
[...] This past weekend, Flock, a browser with some pretty cool new features like del.icio.us integration and blogging tools was released to the world as a developer preview. The whole blogosphere has been talking about it, except us, but I promise I’ll have a full review of it tomorrow (I want to make sure to spend some real time with the browser to get a fair review). Anyways, I got a great tip in my e-mail the other day on how to convert a Firefox extension into a Flock extension. This is possible, of course, because Flock is based on the latest Firefox codebase. The process is fairly simple and requires you adding a couple of lines to the extension code (not as hard as it may sound). You can find full details and instructions over at LiewCF.com. Please note that not all extensions may work with this, but it’s worth a shot if you don’t want to be without your favorite tool. [...]
November 16th, 2005 at 1:04 am
[...] El programa todavía está catalogado como “Developer preview” y por ello el numero de extensiones compatibles es aún algo corto. De todos modos, como el programa se basa en firefox, técnicamente cualquier extensión, retocandola minimamente, se puede usar, y en esta web (en inglés) tienen un pequeño manual para portarlas. [...]
December 24th, 2005 at 4:15 am
[...] Hi,It was very easy to make the extension Flock'able, obviously though I must host this file myself.http://www.liewcf.com/blog/archives/2005/10/make-your-own-flock-extensions/Cheers,Gareth [...]
January 5th, 2006 at 6:41 am
[...] The world isn’t what it was five years ago: the Web most certainly isn’t new to the majority of users. We’re not new to this social Web game, either. Our tendencies to float toward extensibility and “custom consumerism” instead of targeted marketing. Spreadshirt allows you to create your own designed T-shirts, simply giving us the base interface and capability to do so. WordPress gives us the capability to post things, but it’s the extensibility allowed by plugins and themes that really add the true power to the system. Yahoo’s Widgets (previously Konfabulator) and Apple’s Dashboard give us that same sort of extensibility on the desktop. With Google’s Personalised Homepage and Protopage, we’re given a basic homepage from which we choose the features most relevant to us. Our favourite Web 2.0 applications are actually just base frameworks that we add our own functionality and content to instead of accepting pre-packaged functionality from others. Why, then, is Flock and its buzz seemingly missing this? Why are we to accept what their vision of an ideal browser is instead of building one for ourselves? What if we don’t want their specific functionality? We’re stuck with it. What if we want new functionality? Even though Flock’s Firefox compatibility allows the use of Extensions, Firefox stock extensions will not work in Flock without changes. Flock, when viewed in this grand social scheme of things, loses a lot of the lustre and social vision that they’re trying to build into it. [...]
January 24th, 2006 at 1:15 am
[...] Flock is built on the same firefox framework, version 1.5. This allows us to be able to install any of the firefox extensions, as long as they are ported to Flock. This is really simple and only takes a few lines of code. Good instructions can be found here. [...]
June 21st, 2006 at 2:39 am
Ya its good but I am not getting what is the difference b/w these two browser I mean Flock browser and FireFox…I tried above steps up to the 5th one .after that I didnt get how to convert this ..better to give more explanation I think so….
June 21st, 2006 at 3:18 am
@Kraj: Flock website now automatically convert Firefox plugins for you.
August 14th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
After a long time I am seeing this ,I got it(automatically convert Firefox plugins) . Thanks a Lot for your concern…