What is Digg?53 Comments
- tmcclellan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Actually, I didn't know about Nightly Tester Tools, and am now much happier with the knowledge.
Thanks. - Swampthing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11VERY good suggestion! Tried it out with the new 2.0 beta release 1 and all my extensions work now.
- kluge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8@r2d7 Unfortunately, no. This is a common problem that plagues any program/product that allows 3rd party extensions and stems from a fundamental design decision.
There are two choices:
1) Don't give 3rd party plugins much functionality, so developers know what they shouldn't change in order to break extensions. However, the resulting plugins won't do much.
2) Let developers have access to most functionality, allowing them to create a lot of very cool extensions (what Firefox does). Developers can touch almost any part of the product code. However, whenever Firefox decides to update/change some code, it's going to affect compatibility.
In almost all software development environments, changes will be inevitable. Nobody can predict what every single future need will be.
This leads to another issue- the quality of these extensions can vary wildly by developer- some are well built, and some are just a mess of spaghetti code. Should the Firefox team be responsible for keeping extensions up to date? What if the extension is poorly written, or isn't used much? Who gets to pick and choose which extensions get updated with each new Firefox release? And furthermore, it takes time and effort to understand other people's code. It's easier to assign the task to the original person who wrote it.
Firefox is not alone; the best two other examples of this that I can think of are Gaim (for which I'm actually a plugin developer) and World of Warcraft. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15is that comment supossed to make you look smarter?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6backwards compatibility isnt always a good thing, go ask microsoft
and if you ever made an extension, you see the version compatibility info is up to you
you can set the min/max version there. - asdren, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6yeah, nightly tester tools rocks
- MellerTime, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10I'm with r2d7... This is ridiculous. Two major releases in a row that have orphaned previous extensions? There's no reason that should *ever* happen in a product release. I can understand going from a pre-1.0 release to a 1.x release that requires a rewrite of extensions, but once the product is released, you should maintain backwards compatibility. These users and extension authors are your customers, and you should go out of your way to make life easier on them.
That's the beauty of Firefox, right? That extensions let you do anything... How are you supposed to explain to the common Joe User that the simple auto-upgrade he just did on this new fancy Firefox browser everyone's talking about broke all of his extensions?
Very poor showing on Mozilla's part... Very very poor. - luke--, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Awesome, so this was why it was so easy to release updated versions of extensions before, authors just had to change the official compaitibility string.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3A lot of extensions still won't work. And don't even TRY to use any theme but the defaults. I love my Charamel theme too much, so I'll just wait until FireFox 2.0 is out of beta and updatable from directly within FireFox 1.5.0.4.
- awhiteflame, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Ahh ! Flashblock once again! Dugg! Excellent Link!
- jmn2k1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Try disabling the extensions and enabling one by one... and see which one is crashing... This only change the version numbers, so if the extension isn't compatible it wont work...
- AKfortyseven, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5THANK YOU! What a useful Digg. So what does everyone think about the beta?
- MiamiGuy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Or you can just use thie MR TECH Local Install extension found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/421/ which has many useful features and makes all your extensions compatbile with other versions of firefox with just one click.
- Solan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Trying to test out the new beta version of Firefox was always a pain....a real pain because all your extensions will become incompatible. Not anymore. Thanks kingsquest for posting this awesome way to make all extensions compatible.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+12Isn't it about time new versions of Firefox maintained compatibility with extensions? It's a little silly to have to do something / wait for the author to do something every time a new release comes out.
- jccalhoun, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7This is spam. Look at the guy's profile. Every single link is to his crappy website. If he were really wanting to be useful he could just link directly to https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/958/
It is also old news. http://www.digg.com/software/Nightly_Tester_Tools_Firefox_Extension - dominantcorked9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sweet link, thanks.
- MellerTime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@kluge:
I see your point about changing code, but don't you think this is a little extreme? Every single time they release a new version, they kill off anything that hasn't specifically had its version tag updated?
I'm not a professional software developer by any means (just an amateur hobbyist), but you mean to tell me that there's no better way to handle this? I find that seriously hard to believe...
Users forced to edit plugins themselves to simply mark them as compatible... just seems horribly unacceptable to me... But then, maybe that is just me... - nikanj, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Didn't work for me. Firefox 2.0 keeps crashing. Can't get it to start.
- nocode, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1But think about how many extensions there are out there for Firefox... It's open to users to modify firefox, but not everyone follows the same guideline's of how to write code. Firefox having to make all the necessary changes to see and make sure that all extensions work would be extremely tedious. Making extensions are really for personal use and giving others new options. Mozilla shouldn't be held accountable for all these extensions (albeit they take some ideas, but no where near all of them).
- sallytwoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Thank God. I've been trying to surf without my extensions today. I thought I was going to have withdrawals. Thank you for this Digg.
- hriwo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3This also seems to work with flock, I've been waiting to use some of my firefox extension with flock (e.g. bugmenot)
- vize, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Answering my own question...looks like Firefox beta 1 final is already available
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/bonecho-beta1-candidates/rc3/ - MiamiGuy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Well the extension itself makes itself compatible on newer versions of Firefox. It worked for Bon Echo that's for sure.
- Nukem945, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2So.. themes will have to wait a bit. I've tried most of the popular ones. Using the Nightly Tester Tools "Install Extension or Theme" feature keeps the overall UI the same or, in the case of iFox Smooth, the sizing seems to be off. Only the button icons appear to replace the default icons.
- ecerulm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The Nightly Tester Tools are now hosted at http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/buildid/index.html
- Eccles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How about having a warning state? I.e., you have to specifically enable a particular extension (via a button in the extensions dialog/window/whateveritis) if it is not tagged as compatible.
BTW, my thanks to the person who mentioned this in the previous 2.0beta story, as I had already set it up after finding thanks to their comment. - Eccles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I want everyone to use it -- if just for the spell-checker...
- jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Firefox's versioning system does allow for foreward compatibily
Version.Milestone.MajorPatch.MinorPatch
Version - Pure Marketing
Milestone - How close they are to achieving the goals set for the next version (ie. 1.5.0.* = ~50% to 2.0)
MajorPatch - Any patch that makes changes to the code that could break extension functionality
MinorPatch - Any patch that makes changes to the code that won't break extension functionality
All extension developers need to do to ensure foreward compatiblity is specify their major version as 1.5.0.*, in Version 2 it will be 2.0.0.* and so on. - kluge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@MellerTime
Right, it is extreme to just invalidate all plugins. If a piece of software is designed reasonably well, 99% of it shouldn't change between releases. Most extensions should continue to work just fine.
The problem is that remaining 1%. How do you know when an extension works and when it doesn't? It's possible that the extension could end up interfering with the general behavior of Firefox, thus breaking things. Sometimes its hard to tell if its a bug in Firefox, or with the extension (and because we're talking about a beta version of Firefox, you have to assume that Firefox might be the culprit). The result is that the Firefox developers end up getting a lot of bug reports, many of which might not even be their fault. It takes a lot of extra painstaking work to verify if those reports are true or not. Even worse, people might get the impression that the Firefox developers write bad code, and nobody likes bad publicity.
An easy way to reduce the number of such bugs is to have someone actually verify if the extension works or not. And the people best qualified to do that are the extension writers themselves.
In the end, those handful of broken extensions place a large burden on the Firefox developers that they don't even have any control over. The Firefox people want to focus on one thing- getting a solid core product out that everyone can appreciate. Perhaps it would be different if there's an extension that is universally used by over 50% of firefox users, but I highly doubt that. - orlandogeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1PowerCow, I concur with your example. Maintaining backwards compatability could probably account for so many issues that we currently see with Windows. Everyone wants everything to always work without considering the consequences that that will bring. Not always practical, unfortunately.
- calebegg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1no, that's firefox beta 1 release candidate 3. The official firefox 2 beta 1 will be released "later this week"
- MellerTime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Best comment yet... Come on, don't pretend you didn't think the exact same thing when you saw it, people... That's quality entertainment right there...
- zizzybaloobah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1when I tried it, some extensions worked, while my Web Developer extension simply made my status bar about 3 times taller than normal, but with no Web Dev functionality available.
Adblock, and the Filterset.G extensions work with the Beta as-is - no mod's needed (at least they worked for me) - lochness, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Cool. seems to be working fine for me.
Thanks !!!!!! - spacebar14, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I'd laugh if this extension wasn't compatible with the beta.
- moeq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Didn't have to do this with Adblock and Filterset G. They migrated to Bon Echo Alpha 3 all by themselves, and then to the Betas.
- Trotter516, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Worked for me. True, a few extensions worked without it, but I live and die by my extensions!
- hiscity, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Very sweet article! Worked great with FF2B1 portable. I have all my extensions and new Fox on my desktop right beside his older sibling, 1.5.0.4. FF2B1 is working just fine.
Downloaded the portable FF2B1 from:
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2006/07/08/portable-firefox-20-beta-1-release-candidate/
Unzipped it. Copied over my profile directory from my 1.5.0.4 directory. Changed the PotableFirefox.ini file to point to the profile directory I'd just copied in. Launched FF2B -- all my bookmarks, several extensions ok, the rest disabled, as expected. (It hiccuped a few times in the process)
Loaded the NightlyTesterTools extension. Relaunched and checked Add Ons.
Selected make all compatible. Voila!
Back in business with all my extensions:
Backgroundimage Saver
DictionarySearch
DownThemAll
Greasemonkey
IE Tab
IE View
Image Zoom
McAfee SiteAdvisor
MenuX
Nuke Anything Enhanced
OpenBook
Scrapbook
Screen grab
SearchPluginHacks
SessionSaver
Tab X
Table2Clipboard
Then I added www.yubnub.org to the search engines, to polish off the install.
Next I'll make an archival copy of the whole portable directory (as a double check).
Ahhhh! So nice to be able to use multiple versions of Firefox! And the new version without having to wait for extensions to be updated.
The really sweet thing will be copying the whole the FF2B1 directory to the old thumbdrive and moving it lock, stock and barrel to work. About 54Mbyte, because of the session saver files. I didn't clean anything out before copying over the profile directory. Time of evolution 20 minutes.
Giga Diggs for this!!! - i440, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I would really love to try this. I miss Compact Menu Xpi a lot. Nevertheless, I remain apprehensive about one extension breaking Firefox. Any words of encouragement?
- Uruviel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Faster way: open the URL 'about:config'
Right Click > New > Boolean > "extensions.checkCompatibility" set to False.
Restart. Now it skips the checking. Works with all current development versions and the recent Alphas afaik. - CornStarch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2@ r2d7:
Nightly tester has been around for a while actually, you just didn't know about it because you never made a thread at mozillaZine.com and ask how to enable old extensions. - illicium, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I'm sticking to 1.5.0.4 thankyouverymuch.
- santouras, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0excellent! now I can use the firesomething extension again!
- jchri09, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Does anyone know why in FF 1.5.0.4 on some sites you can't copy text?
But in IE 6 or 7 you can copy anything you want.
That bugs me so much and I don't know why it is like that. Does that mean the ver 2.0 is going to be worse with more bugs? - dhakbar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1akumal: I'm not sure about his, but I'm sure that yours is.
- oneunder311, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1This really works. Thanks.
- vize, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Is the official beta coming out Thursday?
- TransmitThis, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1Yerh but does that extension work with Firefox2 Miami Guy?
(couldnt resist - sorry :D :D) - p51d007, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1I'm glad there are a LOT of you out there to beta test FF......I'm just gettin' too old to fool around with
beta software anymore. By the end of the day, dealing with idiot customers who couldn't tie their
own shows without help, not to mention how to do ANYTHING with a piece of equipment, all I want
to do is prop my feet up, relax and read the diggs.....
Thanks! :) -
Show 51 - 52 of 52 discussions
Check out the new & improved 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is