video downloadhelper installs but icon missing in latest Firefox

[Sergeant Snips]

In the latest firefox (109), you can install VDH without any errors and it shows up in the list of addons, but the icon never shows up, so it can't be used.  Should VDH create any other menu entries in addition to creating the icon?  I also can't see the icon in the customize toolbar page, so it appears to be missing as well.

I already tried creating new profiles and reinstalling firefox, wiping all profiles and Mozilla data.

Works fine if I revert to Firefox ESR 102 (the ESR release of FF uses older code).

[Sergeant Snips]

Forgot to mention, I'm on Windows 10, 22H2.

[Wild Willy]

Hmmm.....  Not my experience here with the same release of Firefox.  Mind you, I'm running Windows 7.  Maybe you have some browser extension that is giving you protection you don't want.  Or maybe your antivirus is interfering.  It has to be something unexpected in your system because we've got too many people here not having the problem.  I expect this one is going to take some lateral thinking.  Maybe somebody else here has brighter ideas than I do.

[John Moore]

about:addons

Click extensions, make sure enabled.

On Sun, Feb 12, 2023 at 10:26 AM Wild Willy <grampaw...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hmmm.....  Not my experience here with the same release of Firefox.  Mind you, I'm running Windows 7.  Maybe you have some browser extension that is giving you protection you don't want.  Or maybe your antivirus is interfering.  It has to be something unexpected in your system because we've got too many people here not having the problem.  I expect this one is going to take some lateral thinking.  Maybe somebody else here has brighter ideas than I do.

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[Sergeant Snips]

As I said, I reinstalled Firefox multiple times, and while doing so, wiped out all the Mozilla data under AppData, so no other extensions or addons are installed.  When I install VDH, it shows up in addons, but the icon doesn't show up.  Not sure if there should be other menu items added by VDH as well.

No anti-virus is installed.  It's actually a VMWare guest.  Fresh install of Windows and Firefox, and VDH doesn't work.  Do addons create log files to help with debugging?

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Hi,

did you try this?

jerome

[Wild Willy]

I have nothing like what you're showing, Jérôme. But like I've said, I'm on Windows 7.
Maybe this is something new on Windows 10? 11? Linux?

[mjs]

Willy, if you right click on VDH it will tell you it is pinned to the toolbar. So it won't be any different on windows 7.

You can test it out for yourself.

[Sergeant Snips]

Update.  In FF109, after installation, VDH is available via the context menu, and the icon appears under the "extensions" icon in the FF toolbar, but it's not shown on the "customize toolbar" page where you can drag icons onto and off of the toolbar.  So, I can't put it directly on the toolbar.  I normally hide all excess icons, like "pocket", and also "extensions," so that's why I was seeing no way to access it.

So, can someone confirm this on FF109 + Windows 10?  That you have to click the extensions icon to see the VDH icon?  If so, I'll file a bug against FF to revert that change.  Who needs an extra click on their lives?  I don't.

[John Taylor]

I'm running FF 109.0.1 on Win 10 and the icon for VDH has not changed. It is still where it always was.

JT

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[Sergeant Snips]

It's possible the behavior differs for new installations vs. FF that was upgraded in place from an older version.  Did you install FF 109 from scratch in Windows 10?  That's what I did, and it's putting the VDH icon inside the extensions icon, and not allowing direct access to it for customization.  It's repeatable behavior for me.  I didn't reinstall windows, but I did remove FF completely (including AppData), and the behavior is consistent.

[Sergeant Snips]

OK, found out what happened, I think.  Some new Firefox mode called 'unified extensions" was added in more recent FF versions.  To get the old behavior back, you need to go into about:config and set extensions.unifiedExtensions.enabled to false.  Then you need to go into "customize toolbar" and move the VDH icon from "overflow icons" onto the toolbar (otherwise it will again only be accessible via an extra click, in something called "overflow tools").

This doesn't bode well for the future, as once something like this happens, support for the old way may get removed down the road, but it solves the issue for now.

[Wild Willy]

Click mouse button 2 on the VDH icon . . . I never thought of that. Thanks for the tip,
mjs. But as you can see, it is completely different in Windows 7. This doesn't look
anything at all like what Jérôme posted. This is another example of how things change
without improving from release to release. Sure, all the various features are there, but
they are in new places, thus maximizing the learning curve while minimizing the actual
learning when you migrate to a new release. Typical.

Interesting what you say about unifiedExtensions.enabled, Sarge. I indeed have simply
added updates to Firefox for I can't count how many releases. I don't recall ever
uninstalling & reinstalling it. So I have accumulated who knows, maybe 100 updates or
more, including all the x.x & x.x.x updates. Still, my unifiedExtensions.enabled
preference is set to true, & extension behavior on my system is still "old." But once
again, this is quite likely due to my system being Windows 7. I expect everything to
behave "old" here. I'm glad you figured out a way around your problem.

When it comes to the future being different, I suppose we are always under threat of
having the rug yanked out from under out feet. It wouldn't be the first time. The
advent of Firefox Quantum 50+ releases back did exactly that. Michel had to change the
architecture of VDH & he had to invent the CoApp. It was a painful transition. I
imagine another such period of pain is in our future. May it be a distant future.

[Wild Willy]

I just recommended another user find this thread & read it.  So I reread it.  I was struck by a comment I made above about unifiedExtensions in about:config.  At the time I made my comment, I was running Firefox 109.0.  We've had a couple of updates, since then, including 111.0.1 which just came out . . . I think it was yesterday.  In any case, that unifiedExtensions preference no longer exists in about:config.  I had it.  Now I don't.  It may have disappeared at any point between Firefox versions 109 & 111.0.1.  I wasn't diligently checking it.  But now it's gone.  That sort of thing is probably typical of Firefox.  They implement & deimplement preferences as they see fit.  I imagine 99% of the preferences that you can find only in about:config are entirely not understood by 99% of users.  I looked for the documentation of about:config a while ago.  Aside from the fact that it was a discouragingly large volume of rather uninformative prose, it didn't look like the the Firefox engineers pay too much attention to keeping that documentation current.  Typical of software engineers.  Code first.  Document later.  But I don't have time to document because I'm too busy writing new code.  I know.  I was a software engineer for decades.  I did gradually learn the importance of documentation, to the point that I learned how to be a technical writer.  From that point on, I wrote documentation SIMULTANEOUSLY with writing code.  It looks like I was unique in this world.  Maybe it's commonplace in some utopian parallel universe.  Definitely not in this one.