Wed, 08 Feb 2006
Adding Multiple FireFox Extensions
Adding FireFox extensions through the GUI one-by-one is, if you ignore
memory leaks, one of the browsers most annoying quirks. Fortunately,
modern versions of the browser allow you to drop a number of xpi files
in to your "extensions" directory and install them as a batch when you
start FireFox. Of course you need local copies to do this but that's
where a little bit of perl web spidering comes in...
The hardest part of the process is actually finding where to drop them. If you are using a modern Windows system (2K/ XP+) you'll find the "extensions" directory under %APPDATA%, which you can display with "echo %APPDATA%" from within cmd.exe. The other catch is that FireFox (and Thunderbird) create a profile name based on random characters. The full path will end up looking something like this: 'C:\Documents and Settings\dwilson\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\XXXXXXXX.default\extensions'
You'll still be prompted once to install them all (I've not dug too deep in to completely silent installs yet) but it's a lot simpler than the alternative. And a good first step on way path to completely unattended installs.
Like this post? - Digg Me! | Add to del.icio.us! | reddit this!
Posted: 2006/02/08 18:15 | /tools/firefox | Permanent link to this entry | This entry + same date
Copyright © 2000-2005 Dean Wilson
