How To Install XPI And JAR Firefox Add-ons And Themes

We all love Firefox add-ons and extensions. They are so easy to use, so useful that many of us can’t stay without them, and also easy to install…or not??

If you find a useful add-on at the Firefox Add-ons home page, you will find a green button that you simply click to install the extension. But sometimes, when an add-on is made by someone with his own web site they tend to store them on their servers, and offer the setup as regular XPI (extensions) or JAR (themes) files.

So what do you do when you find one of those two files and you want to install them?

There are two ways you can use:

The first way, is to drag and drop the file/URL of the extension in the Add-ons manager (Tools>Add-ons). The normal installation window will show and you’ll be ready to install.

The second way, is to modify a voice in the configuration page, to unhide a “secret” install button inside the Add-ons Manager:

Type about:config in the address bar to access the advanced preferences.

Look for the preference “extensions.hideInstallButton”.

Double click it to change it to false.

Now you will have an Install button in the Add-ons Manager, that will enable you to browse your computer, and look for XPI and JAR files to easily install them.

Posted by Nicolo' Canali De Rossi on Friday, January 11th, 2008, under How-To.

Technorati Tags: Add-Ons, Button, Extensions, firefox, Hidden, Install, Themes

3 Comments

Freeman

Posted February 26, 2008 at 12:23 pm | Permalink

You make my day!
Anurag Bansal

Posted July 9, 2008 at 12:40 am | Permalink

This is awesome. So simple but nowhere mentioned. You are a magician.

Thanks for the tip.
tano

Posted September 21, 2008 at 4:36 pm | Permalink

THANKS A LOT

4 Trackbacks

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