Hacking Add-ons To Work in Firefox 3.5

Please be sure to realize that hacking the add-ons could cause Firefox to stop working. Please be careful!

I in no way think this is the best way to get add-ons to work, but if there is no version for Firefox 3.5 and you can’t live without it why not give this a try.

The other day, I upgraded my Firefox browser and was sad to see a bunch of my add-ons were not compatible. One of the add-ons happened to me my indispensable RSS reader (Sage). I then read that there is a way to hack it into behaving.

It isn’t necessary that the plug-in does not work in Firefox 3.5; it may just be that the developer set the max version so something like 3.0.* which doesn’t match 3.5.

The way to fix this is to try and set the max-version for Firefox to 3.* which means any Firefox 3 version.

Here are the steps on how to go about this:

1. Download the add-on in any browser but Firefox, and save to desktop

2. Change file extension to *.xpi.zip

3. Extract the zip files to your desktop

4. Open install.rdf in your text editor

5. Scroll down until you find the <em:maxVersion>

6. Change the value between this tag to: 3.*

7. Save the file, and close

8. Zip up all the files again

9. Take out the .zip and replace it with .xpi

10. Drag the .xpi file into your web browser and install it

Voila, you know should have a working add-on. This may not work with all add-ons but happened to work without a hitch for “Sage”.

Related posts:

1. Firefox 3 advancing, but IE6 not going away…
2. Firefox 3
3. Firefox Saved Passwords… handy, but insecure?
4. Browser Refresh Automation (XRefresh)
5. Web Application Hacking Exposed

Written by Brenley Dueck