How to make Firefox addons work with the newest Firefox

Newest Firefox version has been released and you're keen to try it. But when you install it, you found out that some of the addons wont work anymore.

No worries. You still can make it work.

Step 1 – Downloading the add-on

Locate the add-on you want to install. If it’s on the official Firefox add-on page you’ll have to click “See All version” to be allowed access to the .xpi. Right click on the now clickable “Add to Firefox” button and choose save target file as. 

Step 2 – Extracting the add-on

Locate the add-on you just saved. You should be able to open the .xpi file with your favorite compression utility. Extract the add-on to the folder of your choosing.

Step 3 – Modifying install.rdf 

Open the folder you just extracted the xpi file to. You’ll see a file called install.rdf. Right click and choose "Open with". You can either use notepad or WordPad.

Once you have the document opened do not get intimidated by the amount of text that you see. Search for the word "maxversion".

All you have to do is edit what is between the > <. In this case it says 3.0. Change the number to the current installed version of Firefox. In this case I have Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 installed. Which is written out as 3.1b1. So when I get done, it should say “3.1b1”. 

Once you have that change made, save and exit the file.

Step 4 – Recompressing the xpi file

If you use Winzip, I would recommend you open the folder containing the extracted contents of the xpi file and do a select all. Once all the files are selected, right click anyone of them and click “Add to zip”. When you’re done you should have a file ending in .zip. All that is left is to rename the zip file (in XP you’ll have to make sure you can see file extensions) to the name of the xpi file you downloaded earlier. Just make sure when you are done that the file ends in .xpi and not .zip.

That’s it. Now just open Firefox and drag the xpi file you just created into Firefox and choose install. Reboot Firefox and your add-on should now function properly.

Btw, I'm still using Opera as my default brower! :-p