PasswordMaker Forums
Firefox/SeaMonkey/Mozilla/Netscape/Flock Browser Extension => Help and Support => Topic started by: Guest on September 12, 2005, 06:59:41 PM
-
I was just wondering why many extensions need to be updated when a Firefox versions changes. It would see to me that with this great and powerful system they would stick to some standard or make it more modular. It seems like the fixes are pretty quick for some extensions.
Can you explain it to me. Simple or advanced, whatever you perfer :)
-
Firefox 1.0 - 1.0.6 were largely the same. There weren't that many version incompatibilities. However, the system is flawed. Extensions almost always leave behind parts of themselves even after you've uninstalled them. Try it. Uninstall PasswordMaker and the following files (at least) get left behind:
passwordmaker.rdf
passwordmaker.xml
/extensions/{5872365e-67d1-4afd-9480-fd293bebd20d} And this is for PasswordMaker. Its not that bad actually. Others (http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/tabextensions/index.html.en) are much worse.
That is why the developers over at Mozilla have completely revamped the extension system for Firefox 1.5 However, they've let developers know the differences far in advance, so by the time the official version of 1.5 comes out, pretty much all of the extensions will work.
At least, that's the gist I've gotten. I'm not a developer, so I don't know for certain. I hope that wasn't long-winded. I do that sometimes. I'm sure Eric will give a much better explanation.
-
I was just wondering why many extensions need to be updated when a Firefox versions changes
There are generally two reasons for this:- An interface on which the extension depends has changed, been removed, or implemented differently, thereby breaking some functionality of the extension. In this case, the extension author must debug the problem and actually re-write some code.
- The extension's internal label, <em:maxVersion/> in its install.rdf, is less than the Firefox version specified in about:config's extensions.lastAppVersion. In this case, the extension author merely has to rev <em:maxVersion/> and not re-write any code. See my recent post here (http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=315836) about this (my name is grimholtz on forums.mozillazine.org and kb.mozillazine.org)
Hope that helps.
Uninstall PasswordMaker and the following files (at least) get left behind:
passwordmaker.rdf
passwordmaker.xml
/extensions/{5872365e-67d1-4afd-9480-fd293bebd20d}
Hey, you can permanently remove passwordmaker.xml. That's ancient and hasn't been used since, oh, maybe version 0.6!
-Eric