Force FireFox Extesion Compatibility

If like me you love checking out the newest offerings from FireFox but you hate living without your extensions you can always try to "force compatibility" of your older extension.

Now I must warn that trying to force FireFox to use extensions meant for an older version of the browser can and often times will cause stability issues and might cause FireFox to not work at all. So be warned and be prepared for the worst.

If your extensions wreak havoc with your browser you'll need to start FireFox in Safe Mode to disable and possibly remove them. To do so from the start button click run and type firefox -safe-mode. From there you'll have a few options one of which is Disable all add-ons: If you select this box and then click Make Changes and Restart, Firefox will start back up in its normal mode, except all your extensions and themes (but not plugins) will be disabled. You'll then need to either temporarily disable or uninstall the suspected offender. (more on FireFox Safe Mode)

Now that we've got that out of the way here are the steps needed to remove the compatibility check.

1. Type about:config in the URL bar in Firefox, you'll get a little warning box telling you that you might break FireFox. Click accept, or whatever the option is.
2. Right click anywhere on the page, when the menu box appears select new - Boolean
3. For preference name type extensions.checkCompatibility then choose the value of False.
4. Restart Firefox and you should be able to install any Firefox extension.

This in no way means every extension will work, in my experience many of them do. Sometimes however there are just to many differences between FireFox builds and the old extensions just won't work right.