How to enable all extensions in Firefox 2.0

Martin Brinkmann
Jul 11, 2006
Updated • May 8, 2013
Firefox
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55

You probably already tried the new Firefox 2.0 web browser already and most of you are probably liking what they see. Its feature set is impressive and includes anti-phishing enhancements, a built in spell checker, the ability to restore sessions and to undo closed tabs are all great and helpful. If you ran extensions in Firefox 1.x and upgraded to version 2.0 you may have noticed that some of your extensions have stopped working.

Hans Schmucker, a commenter on my initial article about the new Firefox 2.0, pointed out that you can use an extension called Nightly Tester Tools to make the majority of extensions compatible with Firefox 2.0. Most authors of extensions define a range of Firefox versions that their extension works with and 2.0 is obviously not included in many extensions.

Download Nightly Tester Tools and install the extension. Restart Firefox afterwards and click on tools then add-ons. Hit Make all compatible and restart Firefox again. All extensions should be working fine with Firefox 2.0 now. Some might not be working due to incompatibilities. If that is the case deactivate all extensions again and activate one by one to see which ones are causing troubles.

If everything worked out you are ready to use Firefox 2.0 with the majority of extensions. All extensions that I'm using for instance are working fine with 2.0, for example Adsense notifier, Video Downloader, Download Statusbar, Google Toolbar, Linkification, Screen Grab and many more. Let me know if you encounter extensions that are not working.

Update: Firefox 2.0 has been retired by Mozilla, and newer versions of the web browser are now available for download at the official Mozilla website. The latest version at the time of writing is Firefox 12 (May 2012) with new versions of the browser released every six weeks.

Mozilla made a clean cut from Firefox 3 to 4, and Firefox 4 to 5. Those were the major steps that changed some of the browser's underlying technologies, and resulted in some add-on incompatibilities and changes to the browser's interface.

The company changed add-on compatibility as well in recent versions so that it is no longer necessary to run Nightly Tester Tools to force compatibility.

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Comments

  1. Rosamond Borella said on February 23, 2011 at 6:46 pm
    Reply

    Looks like the Northeast is going to get hit again.

  2. elmo said on June 2, 2008 at 9:12 am
    Reply

    addon not found!

  3. Greg said on April 11, 2008 at 3:13 am
    Reply

    I tried the work around for the beta 3 version of Firefox and it works.

  4. Jamarion said on November 17, 2006 at 9:25 pm
    Reply

    Please add firefox cookies/bad web sites immunization in next version!
    Firefox 2 cannot reject third party cookies!!!!!!!!

  5. Cade said on November 17, 2006 at 3:01 am
    Reply

    Help me please…
    I just installed Firefox 2.0, and all of a sudden, my username/password isn't being inserted in the signon window (it always was before). I tried the usual suspects–I did not mistakenly tell FF not to remember the password for this site; and I also tried the remember password bookmarklet, but all to no avail–FF will not ask me to remember this password. What do I need to do to get around this?

  6. Pardus said on October 1, 2006 at 10:22 pm
    Reply

    is not available for Linux.

    :-(

    How about a linux version.

  7. Martin said on July 17, 2006 at 8:17 am
    Reply

    You will have to activate them again in the extensions menu.

  8. Scott Russell said on July 17, 2006 at 12:21 am
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    After installing Firefox 2.0, I acknowledged the warning screen that said many of my old Firefox extensions wouldn’t work with this beta version. What I didn’t know is… they are deactivated even when I switch back to version 1.5! I’ve since deleted Firefox 2.0, but can’t get my old functionality back. Any tips?

  9. Sekerob said on July 12, 2006 at 1:44 pm
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    Been running 2.0 Beta 1 since announced and works great. Nightly Testing Tool in my Add-Ons (f.k.a. Extensions), since a long time to bypass the version numbering install restriction. Gradually force installing my 62 odd add-ons….All-In One Sidebar sofar causing Status bar to become hi-rise hi, so on hold. The Force installing for each causes the freeze of the Add-On window, but killing FFx and its great sessions recovery and sublime speed its gained in restarting make it an acceptable Beta Pain.

  10. Ike said on July 12, 2006 at 6:21 am
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    If you want to test things out in a sandbox, download the Portable Firefox, then run it straight from the folder.

    Since it keeps all of its data in that folder, it won’t mess up any of your 1.5 settings.

    You can add the extensions you want to test one at a time, and build up that way. If you have a habit of downloading your XPIs and installing them manually, this ought to be an easy process. (You DID know that you could drag and drop a XPI onto the browser to install, right?)

  11. Dutsguru said on July 12, 2006 at 3:43 am
    Reply

    These are the extensions that I currently run in Bon Echo

    1 Click Weather
    Bookmark Backup
    Colorful Tabs
    Customize Google
    Domain Details
    Download Statusbar
    Ext2Abc
    Fare Compare
    Faster Fox
    Flashgot
    Footie Fox
    Fox Clocks
    Google Toolbar
    G Translate
    PDF download
    Quicknote
    Reminder Fox
    Reveal
    Sage
    Show IP
    Spiderzilla Stockticker
    Statusbar Clock
    Tab X
    Tabbrowser Prefs
    Yahoo Mail Notifer

    All my extensions work with no problem. I have submitted some of the little tweaks that I noticed with Bon Echo that I encountered which was about 4 items.

    Enjoy!

  12. John said on July 12, 2006 at 3:00 am
    Reply

    I tried using this sometime back, and I encountered problems. Is it more reliable now? I have quite a few extensions, and a very important theme that need to be usable…

    AdBlock Plus – No More Ads!
    AdBlock Filterset Updater – Synchronizes Filterset for AdBlock.
    Disable Targets for Downloads – Prevents download links from opening a blank window.
    Tab Mix Plus – Advanced tabbed browsing.
    Download Manager Tweak – Modifications to the Firefox Download Manager.
    IE Tab – Enables you to use the embedded IE engine within Firefox.
    FasterFox – Performance and network tweaks.
    Mouse Gestures – Allows you to executre common commands using mouse gestures.
    Tab Preview – Preview tab contents on mouseover.
    FireFTP – FTP Client for Firefox
    Web Developer – Adds various web developer tools.
    Google Web Accelerator – Speed up the web!
    NoScript – Java protection for Firefox.
    PDF Download – Allows to choose what you want to do with a PDF file.
    Colorful Tabs – Colors every tab in a different color to make them easy to distinguish.
    SwitchProxy – Manage proxy configurations.
    Google Preview – Inserts web site previews in Google and Yahoo Search Results.
    Fission – Combines address bar and progress bar.
    ChatZilla – IRC Client for Firefox.

    …just to name a few…

  13. Cblogger said on July 12, 2006 at 2:33 am
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    I have been using Bon Echo for about 2 months now and have been waiting for something like this. Thanks.

  14. Keith L. Dick said on July 12, 2006 at 2:29 am
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    Myself I can wait until the Offical Relase of 2.0… I’m not in that big of a hurry right now and I never liked “Beta Testing”… hehe

  15. Dutsguru said on July 12, 2006 at 2:21 am
    Reply

    I have been using Bon Echo for about 2 weeks now. After first loading it, like everyone my exts or themes did not work.
    I added the nightly tester tools from this site:
    http://users.blueprintit.co.uk/~dave/web/firefox/nightly/index.html

    after installing restarted Bon Echo and then made compatiable the exts and themes that I had and restated once more and vivola!!! All is working. Over the past 2 weeks I have used Bon Echo with no problems. Usually everynight there is some updates for Bon Echo but in the morning everything is still working like a champ!
    The new spelling and anti-phishing tools also work out quite well.

  16. Jason Mayoff said on July 12, 2006 at 2:07 am
    Reply

    Seems to be working now, but somewhat erratically.

  17. Jason Mayoff said on July 12, 2006 at 1:53 am
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    I tried it. I made everything compatible. That crashed Firefox. I couldn’t reopen 2.0, so I restarted 1.5, then closed it down and was able to restart 2.0. Disabled it all in 2.0. Restarted 2.0, then made two extensions compatible (all-in-one sidebar and Restart Firefox). Now, Firefox 2.0 does not want to start at all.

  18. bob said on July 12, 2006 at 1:36 am
    Reply

    just downloaded the Nightly Tester Tools and all my old extentions are woooooooorrrrkkkkkkinnnnnnngggg

  19. [GEEKS ARE SEXY] Tech. News said on July 12, 2006 at 1:26 am
    Reply

    yeah, that’s one great tool. there used to be some issue running it under linux, but the guy fixed it recently, so there’s no reasons not to use it now :)

  20. Manager Assistant said on July 11, 2006 at 7:58 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! I was waiting to try 2.0 untill more of the extensions were set up for it. 2.0 here i come! This post should accompany the 2.0 download…

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