Talk:Uninstalling add-ons

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Revision as of 17:16, 10 July 2006 by Alice Wyman (talk | contribs) (→‎Global extensions: added reply to 1st question)
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Hao2lian: overlayinfo and chrome.rdf changes are not optional. extensions.rdf is optional, but if you don't change that, the extension would still be listed in the EM. Not sure about components.ini/defaults.ini (bet you're not sure either). prefs.js/other files are optional, but I don't think we should create a separate section for them. I fixed these problems. Asqueella 09:16, 9 Jan 2005 (PST)

Themes

If I am incorrect in saying that themes are treated in the same way as extensions as far as the Extension Manager is concerned, then we need to change that example of a locked extension (currently the default theme).Mozcerize 03:26, 10 Jan 2005 (PST)

I am not sure how themes are treated by other parts of Firefox, but locked theme and locked extension are very similar. The problem is, there are no locked extensions in default install, so I added the theme example. Thought that the theme example is better than no example. Feel free to remove that if you think it is confusing. Asqueella 09:13, 10 Jan 2005 (PST)
I agree that an example is needed, and the default theme example is fine. The only question is whether there are subtle aspects of the manual uninstall procedure which are different for themes than for extensions.Mozcerize 16:41, 10 Jan 2005 (PST)

alternative fix for "...will be removed after...restart..."

I have found that another way to get rid of that message (for a single uninstall attempt). Once I get that message, I reinstall the extension (drag the downloaded xpi file to the extensions manager window). Once it finishes installing, I restart Firefox and the extension finally gets uninstalled.

Unlocking extensions

Okay, so to remove a locked extension I have to unlock it. That's nice to know. Any chance someone could actually consider explaining how, exactly, one might actually go about this mysterious act? The linked article contains nothing but some crap from some equally frustrated commentator, which is worse than useless.

Locked extensions--uninstalling

It would be nice if someone could explain exactly how to unlock a locked extension manager. However, a workaround, which I'm sure is NOT a great thing to do, is to install the latest beta version of Firefox, uninstall the extension you're having problems with, and then reinstall the current non-beta version of Firefox. Not pretty, but it works. The extension manager remains unlocked after reinstallation In the meantime, does anyone know how to unlock a locked extension manager? Please tell us.

Disabling Extensions

I wanted documents explaining what right-clicking an extension in Extension Manager and clicking "Disable" does.

This is what I think.

Disabling is the same as unistalling except for these differences:

  • The extension is not actually uninstalled, therefore it remains in the extensions folder.
  • Firefox does not know that extension exists, although Extension Manager does know.

Is this right? A "Disabling Extensions" page in the knowledge base would be helpful.

--Agent007bond 21:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Global extensions

This article currently implies that global extensions for Firefox 1.5 live inside the default profile folder, and may be active even if a non-default profile is being currently used. I was not aware of that, but certainly the "traditional" place for global extensions is inside the extensions subfolder of the installation directory. This is true of 1.5 and 1.0.x. (See Installing extensions#Global_installation.) I believe this applies to all Moz apps. Also, as it stands, the article doesn't actually mention a global uninstallation procedure for Firefox 1.0.x and Thunderbird 0.8--1.0.x, and so I think we need to rewrite the section on global uninstallation for older versions to make it applicable to these apps too. (Currently it implies that the procedure described for the Mozilla Suite will also apply to them, but doesn't explicitly say so.)

Could somebody suggest how to uninstall global extensions installed into the installation directory of new Moz apps, and confirm that global extensions did not exist for Firefox 0.9, Thunderbird 0.7, and earlier (as implied in the article). Cheers --Mozcerize 21:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

...how to uninstall global extensions installed into the installation directory
First, I'll admit I know very little on this subject but can't you use the same procedure as manually uninstalling from the profile... remove the associated extensions subfolder for the particular extension? You may need to "unlock" it first using -unlock-item {GUID} - See http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/extensions/commandlineoptions.html
I can't answer your second question on Firefox 0.9, Thunderbird 0.7, and earlier (hopefully someone else does!) but I agree that the section on manually uninstalling global extensions (covering Firefox 1.5 under "recent versions") as written, doesn't jive with the Installing extensions article and should be rewritten. The current article section says:
Go to the Profiles directory containing the default profile folder. (The default profile might not be the profile that you actually use.) Then go to the directory that contains the Profiles directory. If there is an extensions directory there, then it might contain global extensions. You can identify and remove them as described in the previous section.
I've never globally-installed any extensions so I just assumed that the article as originally written was correct, and that global extensions could go to the folder containing the "Profiles" folder, for example, %APPDATA%\Firefox\, and be placed inside an extensions subfolder of the %APPDATA%\Firefox folder. (I only did a minor rewrite of that section to combine two paragraphs into one, but didn't alter the contents.) That made sense to me, since deleting the profile would leave the global extension intact, and so would a clean reinstall of Firefox. However, Installing_extensions#Global installation and http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/extensions/commandlineoptions.html indicate that globally-installed extensions are placed inside the applications directory extensions subfolder (along with the Dom Inspector and Talkback). Alice Wyman 16:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)



This is one ugly article! HAND, no offence intended... --FatJohn 02:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

If only there was some way you could make it prettier, or at least mark it as needing clean-up. Oh well. Thanks for the comment.--Np 04:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)