Tools to uninstall extensions in Mozilla 1.7.xx and SeaMonkey 1.x.

Mnenhy

In Mozilla Application Suite and SeaMonkey 1.x, removing extensions is not as easy as it is in SeaMonkey 2.0, given that the latter uses Firefox-based infrastructure.

First off, there is Mnenhy, which has many modules and which is more geared towards expert users. The important module is the Chrome Manager, which is accessible from the Tools menu.

* For SeaMonkey 1.1.xx, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6.666 (Can't remember where I got the version with the .666 patchlevel, but this should be the one for SeaMonkey 1.1.xx);
* For Mozilla 1.7.13, I use Mnenhy 0.7.6

Mnenhy 0.7.6 is compatible with Mozilla 1.7 and SeaMonkey 1, and it can be downloaded from mnenhy.mozdev.org

Extension Uninstaller 0.2

Unlike Mnenhy, this is one is more user friendly and even has easy-to-read error logs in case something doesn't work.

Extension Uninstaller 0.2 also requires the Extension Uninstaller API, which should be installed first.

Now, the problem with getting Extension Uninstaller is that its original website with
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller/ and
http://mozmonkey.com/extuninstaller_api/
URLs is offline.

The only relatively good references I found to it are in
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=365228
— where only the addons.mozilla.org extension pages are references, but these are unfortunately closed, too.

The solution is to peruse the original official URLs in the Web Archive.:

Snapshot from 2010-03-04

There, scroll down to the Install section, see the "Install For:" Mozilla link. Right-click on the link, choose "Save Link Target As..." command to save the XPI.

It's a bit more difficult With the Extension Uninstaller API .xpi, which can be separately had from archive.org.

Installing NoScript to Mozilla in Windows Vista

This blog post describes how to install NoScript to Mozilla Application Suite in Windows Vista.
In all actuality, this should also apply to other compatible Mozilla extensions.

Conditions:

• Windows Vista SP2
• Mozilla Application Suite 1.7.13 (released 21.04.2006)
• NoScript 1.1.4.7

To install NoScript in an account with administrator rights,

• you must run Mozilla as administrator.
  For how to properly install NoScript in a guest account, see below.

  Attempting to install in any other way won't work. Yes, I've tried it myself before I found the solution.

• I chose NoScript 1.1.4.7, because it's the last version for Firefox 1.0.x.

  The reason is that Firefox 1.0.8 uses version 1.7.13 of the Gecko layout engine, which also matches the last version of Mozilla Application Suite. Any newer version might be incompatible, and I haven't tested NoScript 1.10, which is the last version for SeaMonkey 1.1.

• Since Mozilla 1.7.13 is eight years old and does not support modern web standards, installing any extension from addons.mozilla.org requires more steps:
  To download version 1.1.4.7 of NoScript from addons.mozilla.org,
  • go to its version section there and hover over the 1.1.4.7 section so that the Download Now link which looks like a button becomes visible.
  • Right-click on the Download Now link, choose to "Save Link Target As..." from the context menu, then save the extension into a folder of your choice. The Mozilla extension is saved with the .xpi file extension (but not installed.)
  • 01.03.2014 update:
    If that does not work (because of design changes at a.m.o), go instead to Mozilla's relevant addons folder for NoScript at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/addons/722/, and scroll down to the chosen version.

    Firefox addons developers, either by tradition and culture or requirements from a.m.o, append their addons' XPI files with product acronyms as markers of compatibility with a client program in such a way that amongst browsers, fx stands for Firefox, sm for SeaMonkey, and mz for Mozilla. This should inform users of older client versions as to which extension version is still compatible.
    
    As I skimmed over Mozilla's NoScript FTP folder with above knowledge, I noticed that the most recent NoScript version marked with mz is actually 1.8.2.1. I don't remember having tested that version with Mozilla in Windows Vista before, but I hope other adventurous users might be lucky. Maybe in the future I will get to test that version, too.

  • in Mozilla, browse to the on-disk location of the saved extension, and click on it to install. The filename should be noscript-1.1.4.7-fx+mz+sm+fl.xpi
• Given the circumstances, always install NoScript and any other extension into the user profile and not the general installation folder, because it may be rather difficult to remove it afterwards.
• Once the extension reports it's installed, exit Mozilla.
• Then start Mozilla again as Administrator to finish the install process, then exit Mozilla again.
• Start Mozilla normally.

Added L., 01.03.2014.:

Installing NoScript in a normal/guest account.

Now, in a normal or guest account, it needs more work, mainly because of the differing designs of Windows Vista and Mozilla. We should remember that Mozilla 1.7.13 was made to run in Windows 95...

It won't be necessary to run Mozilla as administrator, because it will launch the instance with administrator credentials, which then brings its own settings as set in the administrator account.

Installing NoScript into Mozilla in a non-admin account mostly follows the steps of installing in the user profile space. After that, restarting Mozilla fails with this error:

"The program must close to allow a previous installation attempt to complete. Please restart."

The result in the background is that Mozilla starts, and starts xpicleanup.exe.

The following is an assumption: xpicleanup.exe wants to delete xpicleanup.dat, and unlike in Windows xp and older, the latter file is placed not where xpicleanup.exe anticipates it to be. xpicleanup.exe then fails to delete the file, Mozilla exits, and renders xpicleanup.exe an orphan process, hanging in memory. Trying to start Mozilla several times leaves more instances of xpicleanup.exe in memory. These processes must be ended either from Task Manager or Process Explorer.

Finding xpicleanup.dat within your profile, deleting or renaming it to xpicleanup.bak does the trick, and Mozilla will start again, with NoScript installed and functioning. (I usually rename such files as filename.ext.bak in order to preserve its extension, might I ever need the original and now renamed file again.)

xpicleanup.dat for a normal/Guest account (yours might be named differently) is located at —

C:\Users\Guest\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\mozilla.org\Mozilla\

^ to browse there, enable viewing of hidden files at folder options (Alt or F10 > Menu > Tools > Folder Options)

Useful instructions from a post by Alice at MozillaZine Forums.

---

A little bit of background information and history

Mozilla Application Suite (Mozilla) was not designed with Windows Vista in mind, so using it in a modern operating system is not without obstacles. Yes, it does run, but this post about installing extensions sort of shows where some of the caveats lie.

Mozilla was at the time the open source base for Netscape, and version 1.0 of Mozilla was released on 05.06.2002, which is roughly 11 years ago as of 2013. I mean, wow, eleven years. Anyways, Mozilla was released to a wide variety of operating systems and for just as wide a variety of versions of each, including Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows Me, Windows 2000 (released 17.02.2000) and Windows XP (itself released on 25.10.2001).

After version 1.0, Mozilla progressed to have quick developments over its lifetime by getting new features added, but not too much by way of changes to its baseline architecture.

	Longevity
Mozilla's penultimate 1.7.13 version came out on 21.04.2006, just five and a half months before the RTM version of Windows Vista was finalized on 08.11.2006. Windows Vista was released to general availability on 30.01.2007.	Mozilla 1.7 Alpha is dated 23.02.2004, and 1.7 itself came out on 17.06.2004, so there is two years and about two months of time between 1.7 Alpha and 1.7.13, and exactly two years between 1.7 RC1 (21.04.2004) and 1.7.13.
After mozilla.org ceased development of Mozilla Application Suite, another team took over development and renamed the project SeaMonkey. Windows Vista was not released yet by the time SeaMonkey 1.0 arrived on 30.01.2006, but beta versions of Vista had to have been available already.
SeaMonkey 1.1.xx (18.01.2007 and on) was thereafter developed to accommodate Windows Vista, with SeaMonkey 1.1.19 (16.03.2010) being the last version of the 1.1 line, and the last for Windows 98/Me. Note that Windows 7 was released on 22.10.2009, so there's a great possibility that SeaMonkey 1.1.19 should run well on that operating system, too.	Three years and nearly two months between SeaMonkey 1.1 and 1.1.19. Overall, if I discount layout engine changes, then Mozilla and SeaMonkey are essentially the same product and programmatically the same infrastructure. When taking into account the release dates of Mozilla 0.8/0.8.1 (14.02.–26.03.2001), when it finally became reasonably stable and usable, and SeaMonkey 1.1.19 (16.03.2010), then that whole architecture has lasted for about nine years. Ten when factoring in development time, but that's a stretch considering official titles. If I were, on the other hand, to also consider Classilla, a browser for Mac OS 9, and the latest version of which was released on 19.10.2012, then all in all, Mozilla's run could certainly be timed to ten years from Mozilla 1.0, eleven years from Mozilla 0.9.5 (12.10.2001), and almost twelve years since Netscape 6 (06.12.2000). Such a long lifetime for one branch of development is a testament to its quality and reliability over a long span of time.

Future

The reason to have NoScript in Mozilla is that the browser is just so old and can easily crash with a piece of JavaScript newer than what Mozilla can support. It should be of relevant help that the post that follows this one, is a tutorial on installing extension uninstallers in Mozilla and SeaMonkey.

Installing free and orphaned extensions to Debian Iceweasel and GNU IceCat

In part, this also applies to Mozilla Firefox.

Debian Iceweasel and GNU IceCat are browsers code-compatible with Mozilla Firefox. For those not in the know, they are both like Firefox, but rebranded, just as some shops order produce from a producer (whether or not they produce generic or their own brand-name products), and the shops then rebrand said produce as "their own". The reason with Mozilla Firefox is that it's a registered trademark that belongs to Mozilla.

There are a number of free extensions and themes for which their publishers don't have their own home pages anymore, and download links from the Internet Archive might not work for various reasons (the most common being that the files were not captured into the vault). These add-ons are generally available from addons.mozilla.org, but the site tends to shut out Debian Iceweasel and GNU IceCat.

Granted, some large Linux distributions have their own repositories that host compatible addons for a specific distro version's specific version of Firefox, but distribution maintainers move on, and repositories that cater for older distros with older Firefox versions are EOL'd, as repos have to host files for newer distro releases.

So, here I had a curious case with Go Green, an MPL-licensed theme for which there was no home page anymore, archive.org didn't host the theme's installer, and the only available place is addons.mozilla.org.

There are two ways to fetch the add-on from Mozilla:

One is the easy way, the other way is more complicated, but also
offers more choice.

The ostensibly user-friendly way to installed the latest version of an add-on is thus_

In the instance of the Go Green theme, you can go to

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/go-green/

— in which page there are two obstacles: One is that all of mozilla.org always uses the latest Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in formatting its pages, and so the older a version of Firefox is, the less able it is in rendering the pages. Fortunately, Firefox has this great option to view the page without CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

The other is that JavaScript also blocks showing some links, even if the browser is modern.

So, choose to view the page with no styles:

View > Page Style > No Style

In this case, links and elements previously hidden with CSS will be displayed.

Then, to fetch a specific version of an extension, go to see "Complete version history" (you can jump to it using the text find function; link is clickable).

You should reach this address —

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/go-green/versions/

Or, if you know the address of the add-on, just add versions/ to the URL to see all versions of an add-on, page by page (much simpler, I might add).

The All Versions page shows which browser versions the extension is compatible with, so the best bet is to choose the latest version of the extension that is good for a browser version that matches the prescribed version span.

At the section of a desired extension version, there's a "Continue to Download" link. The link is not clickable, but you can drag it into a new tab, or into the existing tab's widget to cause Firefox to resolve the URL.

In the Go Green theme's case, this will actually open the "roadblock" page, with this address for the page:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/go-green/contribute/roadblock/?src=search&version=1.25

Since you're using IceWeasel or IceCat, you might still be shut out by JavaScript from downloading an extension, with no download button in sight. This is reasonable, as some extensions won't work in Linux, but the script at mozilla.org is not always able to tell exactly that the user is actually running a compatible browser.

When installing extensions made for an operating system different than Linux, then install these at your own risk. It may be easier with themes, but some complex extensions require that you only install the one made for your operating system, especially if it's also been made available for the OS. I've seen this happen with the DOM Inspector extension, which is made by Mozilla, has been included with Firefox, and is specifically tailored to each specific version of Firefox.

As the roadblock page doesn't show the download link when CSS for it is active, choose to use no styles in the page (if you have so far been dragging the links into the tab widget, then the no styles setting for the tab persists)...

The "Download for Windows" link is placed at its coded position, but is not clickable (probably governed so by JavaScript), so drag it into a new tab and save the extension, or if it's already an xpi, install it.

If the add-on installer's filename has a .jar extension, then the extension can be saved as .xpi or renamed later.

This whole option is then simpler, but might not guarantee that you will be getting the right extension that is made for a browser running in your operating system.

With the Go Green case, the theme has only been made for Windows, but if the browser is compatible, it can also be installed in Linux and for Debian Iceweasel. Case in point:

Click for a bigger image.

Downloading the add-on by name from the Mozilla FTP site

To see if a Linux (or Mac) version of the extension is available, you need to find out the add-on's number at mozilla.org. In some cases it's available already in the extension URL, but I think this nomenclature is being phased out from the web front-end.

If you still don't know what's the number of the addon (if the add-on's address is named and not numbered), you can find it out through its add-on icon or other clues, like links and such. See

View > Page Info > Media

Look for an image, the URL of which matches

/addon_icons/

In that URL, the image's filename starts with a number, like

/13551-64.png

^ 13551 is the number of the add-on (64 is probably the native image width). After that, it's easy to find the add-on via mozilla.org's FTP site:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/13551/

The FTP folder there will then display a list of all release versions of extension or theme installers, which are usually JAR or XPI files. If the installer is a JAR file, and you want to install it for Firefox or Iceweasel, download the extension's installer, rename its extension from .jar to .xpi — and then install it in the browser from the directory it's located in.

And to top it off,

The URL for the Go Green theme's latest installer is this:

http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/addons/13551/go_green-1.25-fx-win.jar

ClamWin Antivirus Glue for Firefox

If anyone is still using Firefox 1.5–2.0 and ClamWin, too, then they'd be interested in the subject extension. Unfortunately, this addon has been delisted from addons.mozilla.org and very hard to find from FTP sites (which I tend to trust more).

So I found what turns out to be only one source:
• http://pub.vse.cz/pub/Mozilla/addons/771
• http://cache.vse.cz/pub/Mozilla/addons/771
The license for the extension is MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1.

Caveat

Version 0.2.4 officially works in Firefox 1.5, but here are instructions in a 18.01.2007 comment to a blog post on similar matters. (The original text was here.)

Instructions in my own words: Download the XPI file (the lowermost is the newest version; if you are not sure, then check the statusbar when mousing over the 0.2.4 file link), extract it into a folder, open install.rdf with an editor that supports CR & LF linebraks (NotePad2 is ok); there, edit the em:maxVersion parameter value from 1.4-something to 2.0.0, compress the decompressed files, then rename the file's .zip (I assume) extension to .xpi, then move the file into an open Firefox window to install. When recompressing, make sure that you're only compressing the selected files and folders within the extracted folder and not the folder itself.

Modern stuff

For people using newer browsers, see the Fireclam extension for both Mozilla Firefox 3 and newer, and SeaMonkey 2 and newer.

DOM Inspector XPI for older Firefox/IceWeasel browsers

Knoppix is the kind of distro that by default does not include the DOM Inspector, it's only on a CD, and I think I had even spent a month searching for a way to install it from a .deb file to a version of firefox in Knoppix. All in vain, even if I had the supposedly right package, because it would still prove incompatible and thus unusable (would crasshh).

Then, by chance, I found the right way to install the DOM Inspector XPI separately for Linux in those distros, where a package might be missing (such as a relevant .deb package in Knoppix 4.0.2, because it's a snapshot from Debian's testing branch of the time) or not included at all... — By downloading a specific DOM Inspector XPI from the old mozilla.org FTP site, which is archived at mozilla.org's own ftp site:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0.6/linux-i686/xpi

Caveat in Knoppix and other Live CD-s: You can only install it as superuser, it won't install into the user directory and thus it won't save, but rest assured, you can install it again every time you need it, although it may be tedious for daily use, if that might be the case for some users.

Here's what you have to follow, if you're stuck using a LiveCD, a version of Firefox without DOM Inspector built-in, no package repository to rely on and no package to be found for your particular distro (Knoppix):

1. Find out what your version of Firefox is in your Live CD (launch Firefox; Help>About). For some Knoppix Live CD's I sometimes use, mine is 1.0.6 for Knoppix 4.0.2 and something else in newer versions of Knoppix. Keep in mind that newer versions of Knoppix include Debian IceWeasel (Knoppix is based on Debian), which is a source-compatible rebranded copy of Firefox.
2. Exit Firefox, relaunch it as superuser, best with sudo firefox
3. Go to
   ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/
4. From there, choose the version of Firefox/IceWeasel/GNU IceCat you are stuck using (if using a browser click the relevant version folder link);
5. Once there, browse to a folder called linux or linux-i686 and there browse to the xpi folder. Note down the address in a separate editor.
6. (Make sure that ftp.mozilla.org is the allowed domain to install XPI's)
7. Click on adt.xpi (the XPI for DOM Inspector), which should be at the very top of the directory listing, go through the extension installation procedure. If after installation you don't see the extension listed, don't worry. Restart Firefox again as superuser, via sudo (you should now know how to use it). Verify that DOM Inspector is installed by checking the Tools menu. Exit the sudo'd Firefox.
8. Start user-mode Firefox and you should see the DOM Inspector appear there.
9. To maintain that you still have the XPI for future use, save it to local storage (a memory stick, for example) by downloading it in a normal-user firefox session from the same FTP address.

Now, I haven't been able to find out an XPI of the DOM inspector for older versions of Firefox that would actually work as an extension installed into the user profile, so until then, it's more of a case for frequent users of DOM Inspector in older Firefox browsers on a Live-CD of reinstalling the XPI after every restart.

Settings for DOM Inspector can be changed through about:config, then search using the inspector string.

Adblock Plus and Why Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Matters

Yes, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is old and outdated, yet it's a notch newer than Mozilla Firefox 1.0. Some people may be stuck with it (when stuck using a Live CD or an older computer with an older operating system). When comparing Firefox 1.5 with 1.0, then it, of course, renders slightly better and with less caveats. For computers with sparse resources, Firefox must still be configured to run efficiently.

And not just: It can handle newer extensions, the greatest of which in order of importance are NoScript and Flashblock, and now add Adblock Plus (ABP). The reason? Some modern (as of 2011) websites now harobur designs that do require collapsing some elements in order to view their pages with some attempted modicum of properness (anything on wikia.com). And Firefox 1.5 is the earliest browser to support a version of ABP that collapses CSS elements by id.

Here's how: Adblock Plus 0.7.0.2 (08.06.2006) is the last to run (to be properly supported) in Firefox 1.0, but most unfortunately, lacks the necessary feature.

The next version (0.7.1), which incidentally first includes the functionality of collapsing CSS elements by their ID, only supports Firefox 1.5 or newer. (But this is not the version of ABP you'll need, if you're somehow stuck using Firefox 1.5.)

The last version of Adblock Plus to support Firefox 1.5 is 0.7.5.5 (01.12.2008).

Older Flashblock and NoScript for older Firefox and SeaMonkey versions

If you're ever stuck with an older computer and a Live CD (an older version of Knoppix) or an older computer with Windows 95/98/Me and an older version of Firefox or Mozilla or SeaMonkey, then useful extensions (add-ons, but not plugins) for these still exist and can be installed.

(If installing them from a website won't work, download an .xpi separately and install from local storage.)

The most recent version of NoScript to support —

• Mozilla Firefox 1.0.x (in my case): 1.1.4.7 (XPI)

01.02.2011.

Noscript caveat:
Version 1.1.4.7 does not block META redirects within <NOSCRIPT> elements in HTML. — I saw this with one Russian social networking site.

The noscript.forbidMetaRefresh boolean (set to true) in about:config only applies to refresh elements outside <NOSCRIPT> tags.

Turned out that the functionality blocking META-refresh-in-<NOSCRIPT>-tags was first introduced with version 1.1.4.8RC1 of NoScript, which only supports Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or newer.

02.02.2011.

Multiple Mozilla Firefox 1.0 caveats with the modern Internet:

• Firefox 1.0 is so outdated that only "Basic", "Classic" and "Lite" versions of various popular services work. Remember to place these services' old versions' addresses in the Bookmarks menu or toolbar.
• Windows Live sign-in doesn't work at all.
• Nowadays' popular Websites use scripts and AJAX so intensively that NoScript is invaluable in suppressing unnecessary scripts that may hog system resources (also applies to Firefox 2 and SeaMonkey 1.x).

Windows 95	Firefox 1.5–1.5.0.3:	NoScript 1.5.2 (XPI)
	Firefox 1.5.0.4:	NoScript 1.8.1.3
	Firefox 1.5–	NoScript 1.10	SeaMonkey 1.1.17 –1.1.19
Windows 98/Me	Firefox 2.0.0.20
28.01.2016.
Windows 2000	Firefox 12.0	NoScript 2.9.0.1rc1	SeaMonkey 2.9.1

NoScript versions page

I know I haven't posted much about Flashblock, but it can be had from flashblock.mozdev.org

The legacy options presented in this post pertain to situations where it's impossible to upgrade to SeaMonkey 1.1.19, such as an out of date Live CD (and what if someone has only that?).

Yet when it comes to a Windows 9x operating system, then it's best to install or upgrade to SeaMonkey 1.1.19. Reasons for this in one of my previous posts.