I have created a 'master' install of FirefoxPortable with all of my favorite extensions which I use on several machines via thumbdrive. All of its extensions are up to date, and work flawlessly on the thumb.
However, when running an CD/ISO of my thumbdrive in local mode {FirefoxPortable.ini RunLocally=true} some, but not all, extensions report as 'Incompatible with Firefox $version "Disabled"'. Currently $version is 7.0.1 but this problem goes back to at least 4.x
Checking for updates recognizes the extensions as the most recent version, and to restart Firefox to activate them. After restarting everything works fine.
However, this is required every time a new instance of Firefox is launched. Obviously whatever preference changes need to be made cannot be written to the CD/ISO. Frustration has led me to make 'about:addons' my homepage to help quicken this setup procedure.
Even worse, this situation is not limited to specific extensions. Each time I create a new ISO (after adding a new extension, or a major preference change), a different set of extensions exhibit the behavior. Extensions which required verification and restart on the previous build suddenly work fine, while others that were working now require the twiddling to operate. The pattern of functional/disabled extensions does not follow the order in which they were installed either.
All of my extensions have worked at least once individually in one build or another, but never all at the same time. Since they have each worked at some time, shouldn't it be possible to get them ALL working?
I should point out, that this happens on the original thumbdrive as well, if I set its 'RunLocally' flag. Resetting its flag back to false resumes normal operation. Any clue as to what is going on and how to fix it?
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Extensions you mention have not been updated for Firefox 7 and internally say they are incompatible. Firefox needs to check with Mozilla to ensure they work before enabling them. This works fine on writable drives. It will break on read only drives. The read only mode is really only intended to demo a clean firefox install to new users, nothing more. As cdrom use is dying, we likely won't enhance live functionality further.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
First of all, this is a bug in the current version (and I believe many older versions*) of Firefox Portable's Launcher, thus you should add [Bug] to the title of your Opening Post.
I messed around with it for a while, and have nailed it down to the Firefox Portable Launcher not updating the Extensions.ini & Extensions.sqlite files properly when
[FirefoxPortable]:RunLocally=true.This is due to the launcher updating
$LASTPROFILEDIRECTORYto$ORIGINALPROFILEDIRECTORY(which works just fine if the Launcher doesn't move/copy the profile to somewhere new… e.g.$TEMP\${NAME}) in these (and other) files where it should be updating it to$PROFILEDIRECTORY(which the launcher updates to hold the current path to the proper Profile Directory whether $RUNLOCALLY is"true"or"false").To fix this: please replace "
$ORIGINALPROFILEDIRECTORY" with "$PROFILEDIRECTORY" on Line 340 of FirefoxPortableU.nsi in…\Other\Source.P.S.: At first I thought that line 361 was also incorrectly using the $ORIGINAL… Var, but upon further inspection I think it is using this Var correctly in this instance.
FootNote:
*I remember noticing the typo before, but not mentioning it because I didn't see any way it could cause a problem at the time, and thus figured it was probably like that on purpose e.g. to fix a bug I didn't know about.
~3D1T0R