I don't know how many people use this feature and while the code to do
it (at least for the profile folder) isn't terribly complex, it is
additional code that may not be necessary. Right now the new add-ons
manager doesn't support it and I've heard only a couple of people
comment on its absence but nightly testers are by no means
representational so I'm asking a little more widely whether people have
a real need for keeping this working in Firefox 4?
To be clear we aren't talking about the method of installing where you
extract your extension into a directory in the install locations, nor
are we talking about the method where you create a text file in the
install location containing the path to your extension.
Ryan Li
Ryan Li
On 05/28/2010 06:23 AM, Dave Townsend wrote:
What about using this method do you find more useful than simply
dropping the file onto Firefox after it is running or using the
pointer-file technique?
Can you help me understand why they install extensions in this way
rather than the recommended method for installing extensions, by
extracting the XPI directly so it doesn't interrupt the user on
startup.
Somewhat unrelated to this discussion topic, but yes Firefox generally
won't offer to let users uninstall extensions from the system
locations, partly because it cannot write to them.
Yes this way will continue to work.
> Was he talking about copying the XPI without extracting it?
Yes, we're talking about removing support for just plain copying the
XPI file without any extraction.
This way you can install an extension globally, while dropping onto
Firefox always installs per profile.
Robert
Thank you for asking about this, Dave. I pretty much install all new
extensions and updates this way in Fx 3.6.x on Windows XP SP3. That
is, I save the xpi file to disk and copy it directly into the
extensions folder while Firefox is closed. I do it this way for the
following reasons:
1) I close Firefox so I can create a backup of the profile before
changing it with an extension update or new extension. Before
restarting Firefox, I copy the xpi file into the extensions folder.
This is a bit quicker than having to restart Firefox twice and having
to download the xpi file twice (since I want a local copy of the xpi
file) -- especially on my slow Internet connection and slow computer.
2) I use multiple Firefox profiles. Only one download of the xpi file
and only one restart of each profile saves time for me.
3) It facilitates testing and comparing extension interactions in
different profiles since I know they are using identical versions of
an extension.
4) Adding one or more extensions to a new profile from a local archive
is a lot easier than reinstalling them from AMO.
That said, if I won't be able to do this in Fx 4, I'd appreciate a
convenient workaround. Is there one yet?