Firefox Upgrade: Fairly Uneventful, Albeit Not Problem-Free

Speaking of Firefox (and on that note, here’s what Fake Steve Jobs thinks), I was recently prompted to update my systems to v1.5.0.12 and, shortly thereafter, was reminded that this particular iteration marked the end of the line for v1.5. I’d been delaying a move to v2, concerned about extension incompatibilities and other potential glitches. But since Firefox is my primary browser (as I’ve mentioned before), and since the Mozilla Foundation would no longer be upgrading v1.5 to fix bugs and patch security issues, last weekend I took the plunge and upgraded four Macs and two PCs to v2.0.0.4 (my wife is still IE-only on her Windows-powered laptop).

The computers were all running some subset of the following extensions (now called add-ons) suite that was present pre-upgrade on the laptop I’m typing this on:

• BugMeNot
• ChatZilla
• Copy Plain Text
• CustomizeGoogle
• DictionarySearch
• DOM Inspector (comes with Firefox)
• Download Manager Tweak
• eBay Toolbar
• Fasterfox
• FireFTP
• fluxDVD Download Manager (which came with CinemaNow’s ‘Burn to DVD’)
• FoxTorrent
• FoxyTunes
• Gmail Space
• Google Browser Sync
• Google Toolbar for Firefox
• IE Tab
• IE View
• Image Zoom
• PrefBar
• Print Preview
• Resize Search Box
• SearchPluginHacks
• Skype Extension for Firefox
• Tab Effect
• Tab X
• Tabbrowser Preferences
• Talkback (comes with Firefox)
• TinyURL Creator
• TMobile (USA) Minutes Used
• User Agent Switcher

Before upgrading, I used Firefox’s built-in ‘check for upgrades’ facility to update as many of the installed extensions as possible. Then, for the Windows machines, I installed v2.0.0.4 right ‘on top of’ v1.5.0.12. For the Macs, I dragged the v1.5 icon out of Applications and into the Trash, and replaced it with v2 from the install disk image file.

When v2 launched for the first time, it reported extensions that were v2-incompatible and offered to again check for updates. Strangely enough, it found several that the earlier v1.5 upgrade check had missed. And, post-launch, several others were still reported as v2-incompatible and therefore disabled. In most cases, the ‘fix’ simply involved finding where on the Internet the extension’s ‘home’ had moved to subsequent to my initial installation, and downloading the update from there.

SearchPluginHacks is no longer necessary, as v2 includes a search engine manager, so I went ahead and deleted it. I’m still unable to find a replacement for Resize Search Box, which is unfortunate; it was a pretty slick extension. One of the reviews indicates that it’s possible to tweak the add-on yourself to make it v2-compatible, but the writeup doesn’t provide details.Mac users, take note: Tabbrowser Preferences does not seem to be compatible with either OS 10.3 or 10.4, the latter when run either Intel-native or PowerPC-native under Rosetta (which is how I have it configured on my MacBook, since a Universal version of PDF Browser Plugin still isn’t available). Run Firefox with it enabled and all of the tabs get jammed on the far left side of the browser window; disable it and all’s well.

Two other tweak notes: first, in v1.5, you could highlight some text on a page, right-click on the mouse, select ’search for’ from the pop-up menu, and Firefox would automatically open a new tab with Google search results on the text. In v2, this process is (depending on your perspective) more powerful or more cumbersome; instead of always defaulting to Google, ’search for’ defaults to using whatever search engine plugin you have enabled at the time. The Context Search add-on resolves any inconsistency between the Google (or other engine) you want to use with ’search text’ and the engine you’ve currently got selected, by enabling you to easily select from all installed search plugins (of which I currently have 41 on my laptop’s Firefox build).

Finally, I have ‘Search for text when I start typing’ enabled in Firefox options. However, for some unknown reason, v2 eliminates the ‘next’ and ‘previous’ buttons from the resultant Quick Find bar. Google to the rescue; these instructions explained how, by creating a UserChrome.css file and inserting the line ‘#FindToolbar > * {display: -moz-box; }’ within it, I could restore Quick Find navigation capabilities. This Mozilla document explains where to save the UserChrome.css file, dependent on your particular operating system.

Readers who’ve also surmounted the v2 Firefox upgrade challenge; any stories or suggestions?

p.s….I should also mention the cool Windows Media plugin that Microsoft (believe it or not, although it is Windows XP- and Vista-only) has developed for Firefox. It’s not an extension/add-on per se, since it doesn’t install from within Firefox (instead, you run a separate executable). But it works really well, from my experience testing it so far.

Followup: Some useful coverage of Firefox’s about:config capabilities.