11 January 2010

Enabling extensions and add-ons in Firefox

If you are using a version of Firefox that hasn't yet been released to the public (e.g. a beta or RC version) you may find that some of your add-ons have been disabled.

In my experience, I've found that most add-ons and extensions work fine even if they are not yet officially compatible. To enable these add-ons you need to add a new boolean preference setting. To do this...

1) Go to about:config by typing this into your address bar and pressing Enter
2) Right click in the body of the page and go to New > Boolean
3) The preference name depends on the version of Firefox you are using, but will always have the form extensions.checkCompatibility.[verison]. For example...

Pre: extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6p
Alpha: extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6a
Beta: extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6b
RC: extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6

4) Set the value of the preference to false
5) Restart Firefox

You should hopefully now be able to use all your add-ons and extensions. If this doesn't work, it's probably because you've chosen the wrong name for the preference. Try resetting the preference by right-clicking on it in about:config and then try a different name.

Needless to say, all this is done at your own risk!