2 Tips for Firefox Add-On Users
Incompatible Add-Ons
Most people who use a Firefox (FF) add-on to post bookmarks to Delicious have probably experienced the agony of upgrading to a new major Firefox release and discovering that their favourite posting add-on cannot be installed because it is incompatible. I, for example, use the version of del.icio.us Complete that I hacked to make work in FF 3 -- have I updated it yet to work on FF 3.5? No. And yet, I am still able to use it on my FF 3.5! It is not that I am magic, it's that I use a magical add-on that lets me install and use incompatible extensions:
Add-on Compatibility Reporter
So if you can just force an add-on to work in a new FF version, why don't they let you do that automatically, without having to install a special extension? It's because some add-ons will be really broken and will require major code changes before they can truly support newer FF versions. del.icio.us Complete was designed for FF 2 and it needed to have all the code that dealt with storing account passwords revamped before it would work in FF 3.
The Compatibility Reporter will allow you to test an incompatible add-on to see if it works as-is, no code changes necessary. Once you've used it for a while, you can send a report to Mozilla with your results (broken or working). The add-on developer can read everyone's reports and see if they will need to change the code or if they can simply mark the add-on as being compatible with the new FF.
Old Delicious add-ons that can be forced to work in FF 3.5:
ETA: Forgot to say, if you are on a pre-FF 3.5 version, you can use Nightly Tester Tools to force add-on compatibility, but it doesn't have the added feature of letting you report truly broken extensions to the developer.
New Add-On Version Sucks
You've just installed the latest and greatest version of your fave Delicious posting extension. Unfortunately, once you start using it, you wish you'd never updated because you liked the old version better. This may sound kind of obvious, but it bears stating: you can go back! Most add-on developers keep the older versions available for download. On the official Mozilla Add-On site, addons.mozilla.org (AMO), it isn't at all evident at first glance, but if you're on an extension's main page, scroll all the way to the bottom and you should see a link to View Older Versions. Clicking on that link will take you to a page that shows all of that extension's various versions, with install buttons for each, so you can downgrade to whatever version works best for you. For example, here is the Delicious Bookmarks version list: Delicious Bookmarks Version History.
Most people who use a Firefox (FF) add-on to post bookmarks to Delicious have probably experienced the agony of upgrading to a new major Firefox release and discovering that their favourite posting add-on cannot be installed because it is incompatible. I, for example, use the version of del.icio.us Complete that I hacked to make work in FF 3 -- have I updated it yet to work on FF 3.5? No. And yet, I am still able to use it on my FF 3.5! It is not that I am magic, it's that I use a magical add-on that lets me install and use incompatible extensions:
Add-on Compatibility Reporter
So if you can just force an add-on to work in a new FF version, why don't they let you do that automatically, without having to install a special extension? It's because some add-ons will be really broken and will require major code changes before they can truly support newer FF versions. del.icio.us Complete was designed for FF 2 and it needed to have all the code that dealt with storing account passwords revamped before it would work in FF 3.
The Compatibility Reporter will allow you to test an incompatible add-on to see if it works as-is, no code changes necessary. Once you've used it for a while, you can send a report to Mozilla with your results (broken or working). The add-on developer can read everyone's reports and see if they will need to change the code or if they can simply mark the add-on as being compatible with the new FF.
Old Delicious add-ons that can be forced to work in FF 3.5:
ETA: Forgot to say, if you are on a pre-FF 3.5 version, you can use Nightly Tester Tools to force add-on compatibility, but it doesn't have the added feature of letting you report truly broken extensions to the developer.
New Add-On Version Sucks
You've just installed the latest and greatest version of your fave Delicious posting extension. Unfortunately, once you start using it, you wish you'd never updated because you liked the old version better. This may sound kind of obvious, but it bears stating: you can go back! Most add-on developers keep the older versions available for download. On the official Mozilla Add-On site, addons.mozilla.org (AMO), it isn't at all evident at first glance, but if you're on an extension's main page, scroll all the way to the bottom and you should see a link to View Older Versions. Clicking on that link will take you to a page that shows all of that extension's various versions, with install buttons for each, so you can downgrade to whatever version works best for you. For example, here is the Delicious Bookmarks version list: Delicious Bookmarks Version History.