An easy way to check for Firefox extension upgrades in bulk?

November 30, 2005 1:12 PM

Is there an easy way to tell which Firefox extensions have been updated for a new release?

I want to upgrade to Firefox 1.5 but I've become quite attached to several extensions I have installed (about 19 of them, about half or so are essential). I don't want to upgrade until most if not all of these extensions are supported. Rather than run around to all the homepages, manually checking for updates, is there an easier way, an automated way, a consolidated method, for tracking these things?

posted by friarjohn to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

No. But that would be a great extension.
posted by orthogonality at 1:19 PM on November 30, 2005

There are a couple of ideas in this digg article (though I wouldn't trust the actual link the article is about). Nightly tester tools looks especially promising.
posted by frykitty at 1:27 PM on November 30, 2005

Someone with a scripting skill or two should easily be able to write a tool that will check "maxversion" in each of your installed extensions...
posted by rxrfrx at 1:33 PM on November 30, 2005

That is, you would make sure all of your extensions are up-to-date and then check to see if they'd work with 1.5
posted by rxrfrx at 1:34 PM on November 30, 2005

Slightly off topic, but Lifehacker also posted a workaround to change the maxversion of current extensions. I know it works for Sessionsaver and Resizeable Textarea at least.
posted by Gary at 1:36 PM on November 30, 2005

D'oh, the lifehacker workaround is different than the one I used. Mine is described here and you have to do it per-extension rather than changing browser settings.
posted by Gary at 1:38 PM on November 30, 2005

On a related note, does anyone know if Metafilthy works in 1.5?
posted by blag at 3:42 PM on November 30, 2005

Almost useles infomation: I should point out that Firefox 1.5 will check for updates to extensions that are installed - including ones that are installed that won't run because they're not compatible with 1.5. It won't let you install new scripts that won't work with 1.5, but it will keep old ones and keep checking for updates, rather than removing them.

So you could install 1.5, run the update a make a note of what's missing, and downgrade if needs be.
posted by tiamat at 3:58 PM on November 30, 2005

blag, Metafilthy does not work in 1.5. At least not for me. It was the only extension that, during my upgrade, popped up as not having the appropriate update.
posted by PhatLobley at 5:33 PM on November 30, 2005

Poo. Thanks for checking. I'll try emailing the author.
posted by blag at 6:03 PM on November 30, 2005

i miss metafilthy...
posted by RockyChrysler at 8:01 PM on November 30, 2005

Response by poster: Okay, what I ended up doing is opening my Extensions window and the Firefox extensions page side by side, did a search for each extension to check for the version update. All but two had either updated versions or reports in the comments that the maxversion hack worked. One is kinda key, Bookmark Synchronizer and the other isn't quite as important, TinyURL.

Thanks everyone for the input.
posted by friarjohn at 8:11 PM on November 30, 2005

First, install nightly tester tools. This will override any "not compatible" extensions.

I emailed the Author of metafilthy...he said, no. I asked if he'd just change the max version, and I think it's done for. :(
posted by filmgeek at 9:02 PM on November 30, 2005