This Extension Is Not Compatible

By jeffcNews

Today is the big day where Mozilla will try to break a record for a piece of software downloaded the most number of times within a 24 hour period. It’s the launch of FireFox 3 which promises over 15,000 improvements including bug fixes, performance increases and an increase in reliability. However, there is one aspect of the new release which will hold me back for at least a month or so and that is the extensions.

After installing FireFox 3 onto my notebook just as a test, I discovered that a number of extensions I use on a daily basis as a means of getting my work done were incompatible. The extensions were as follows:

  • MeasureIt 0.3.6
  • SnagIt 1.0.1
  • TinyURL Creator 1.0.4
  • tweetbar 1.0
  • whos.amung.us Users Online Counter 1.6

The only plugins which really matter to me within this list is the Tinyurl creator, Tweetbar and SnagIt. Without these, my productivity goes down the tubes. Considering FireFox 3 has gone through so many release candidates, I don’t understand why these plugins are not compatible. I did a check to see if there were any updates and the only one which updated was the FireFTP extension.

This reminds me of the situation with Windows Vista. There were so many release candidates for the operating system on top of the amount of time between beta releases and the final release yet, there were plenty of incompatibilities.

My advice, hold off on upgrading if some of the extensions you use are vital to your workflow. If you have already upgraded and noticed an extension was not compatible, let us know in the comments. Also, I’m interested in knowing what your experience has been like with the new version.

16 thoughts on “This Extension Is Not Compatible”

  1. If you get the extension called Extension List Dumper, you can see which extensions will work with Firefox 3. Go to Addons.mozilla.org and install Extension List Dumper. Restart Firefox. Go to Tools->Add-ons and click the “Options” button for Extension List Dumper. Put a check next to “Works With” and then click “Save.”

    Now click the new “Dump List” button at the bottom of the Add-ons page. The compatibility range of every extension appears on the list.

  2. i also had the same problems 🙁 i’m using whos.amung.us Users Online Counter 1.6. Too bad, it’s not compatible.. so the best thing to do is.. wait for it to be compatible or downgrade to ff2.. hehe

  3. I like it except for the fact that I need that Google PR plugin. But best of all Scrabulous in Facebook still works! I did note tho’ that the chat function in Facebook doesn’t work quite right.
    In general, the identity info box by the address bar is VERY annoying. It pops up when I am copying Url’s and I don’t like it.

  4. I was first very disappointed when FF released 2 – it caused me a headache – I will let others test this for a while. Also have you had a look at Flock yet? Any thoughts?

  5. Thanks for those awesome tips. I’m going to give NTT a try later today to see if that fixes the issue allowing me to use my extensions within the new version.

  7. FF for me is all about the addons.
    I use 23 addons, which make my work very easy,
    click,click click.
    Other wise its continual cut and paste,
    and pulling up other sites.

    They need to publish a list of addon that won;t work
    and a list of addon that will work.

    Its not about forcing a FF3 down our throats.
    We can;t make an informed decision with out knowing what will works and what doesn’t.
    FF used to be about users experience, they have lost sight of that.
    G

  8. The secret to Firefox extension happiness is the Nightly Tester Tools extension. The vast majority of extension “incompatibilities” have nothing to do with the extension being incompatible with the new code. When a developer writes an extension, he/she specifies what versions of Firefox the extension should operate in. It’s a couple of characters of code, but it causes a lot of headaches.

    The solution is to get Nightly Tester Tools and click “make all compatible.” For most users, 75% or more of their extensions will immediately work again, because all that was required was to change the “compatible with” setting. I know from personal experience that NTT will fix TinyURL Creator; it didn’t help with Tab Mix Plus, but there is a pre-release version already out for FF3 that has worked like a charm for me.

    If you want to install (rather than upgrade) extensions that are marked incompatible, set ‘extensions.checkCompatibility’ to false in about:config; if it doesn’t turn up in the search, you’ll have to create it and set it to false. This stops Firefox from checking an extension’s compatibility, allowing you to install it and then use NTT to set it as compatible. You can also set ‘extensions. disabledObsolete’ to false to prevent Firefox from disabling incompatible extensions at all, but I find it easier to just use NTT whenever one turns up incompatible. For help with changing about:config settings, see the MozillaZine help page.

    Happy browsing!

  9. Love it. Love it. Just when I was getting sick of FF as a system resource hog, this work of beauty emerges.

  10. FEBE that is compatible with FF3 is available. Visit the add-on page to get the url.

    I consider myself lucky. When trying Flock, all my FF extensions work there, while major upgrade in FF itself breaks a few extensions…

  11. My only hangup before I upgrade on my home machine is Tab Mix Plus, a (for me) indispensable tab behavior extension. The author promises it’ll be ready this month.

    Also not working, but not critical for me:

    • BugMeNot (share access to throw-away logins to sites where you don’t want to create a real user account for yourself)
    • FEBE (automatic backup of bookmarks, extensions, user settings, etc.)

  12. I just cancelled the download and decided to wait until more of the extenesions work. Oh well… I tried to do my part to help break the download record.

  13. Hey K, thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. The link is fine. That might help, but my desktop pc will remain with FireFox 2 until I can rest assure the extensions I need will work with the new version.

  14. Hi Jeffro, following you here from Twitter. You could use the TinyUrl bookmarklet instead of the extension. Sorry to link to a post of mine (linked to my name) but not sure how the comment form will handle submitting javascript code. Hope this helps.

    Couple of extensions I miss are FullerScreen, delicious complete.

  15. Glad to hear your experience was much better than mine. I hope the devs for my extensions push out updates soon, I want to use FireFox 3 and that new smart address bar. Also interested in seeing if FireFox 3 uses 500 megs of ram after 3 hours of use.

  16. I have been using all of the release candidates and every version has worked smoothly. The interface is much better looking, not to mention noticeably zippier. Importantly, Firefox is no longer a memory hog on OSX and boots up very fast.

    My critical extensions (Firebug/Web Develop/del.icio.us) all have been updated, so everything’s looking good!

Comments are closed.