Adding Pale Moon's GUID to a Firefox extension is no replacement for making a fork or properly adapting the extension to the Pale Moon browser.
This is a temporary emergency workaround for personal use only! Making extensions "continue to work" this way will also have the consequence that it limits your options for getting support since we cannot support setups with extensions that have been hacked this way - there are too many unknown factors and the only solution is for a proper forked extension to be made that has been tested with and is targeting Pale Moon directly.
This will explain how to open up an extension's xpi and use a text editor to add Pale Moon's application block to a file, install.rdf, that lives inside the extension.
The instructions are admittedly Windows-centric, because I don't have experience with Linux, or Mac.
WHAT YOU NEED IN ORDER TO DO THE EDIT:
- A copy of your extension's xpi (cross platform installer);
If you don't have one saved, you'll find a copy in the extensions folder in your browser profile. (To find your profile, go to Help -> Troubleshooting (about:support in the address bar) and click "Open Folder".) The files are named by their IDs, and some are hard to identify, but there is a list of Extension Names + IDs on your about:support page to help with that. - Archiver (zip/unzip) software, such as 7-Zip, WinRAR, PeaZip...etc. On Windows, there is also built-in functionality to extract from/send to a zipped archive. (I personally use 7-Zip.);
- The Pale Moon application block, found in this tutorial, How to create a Pale Moon targeted extension
(please read the entire tutorial for a better general understanding);
For convenience, I've copied the application block here:Code: Select all
<em:targetApplication><!-- Pale Moon --> <Description> <em:id>{8de7fcbb-c55c-4fbe-bfc5-fc555c87dbc4}</em:id> <em:minVersion>28.0</em:minVersion> <em:maxVersion>28.*</em:maxVersion> </Description> </em:targetApplication>
- A plain text editor;
(I use Notepad++, but there are tons of others, including Windows' come-with Notepad. DO NOT use a word processor or rich text editor.)
HOW TO EDIT:
- Change the file extension of your xpi from ".xpi" to ".zip" (an xpi is just a zipped archive with a different file extension).
Using DownThemAll as an example, downthemall-3.0.8-fx+sm.xpi becomes downthemall-3.0.8-fx+sm.zip. - Extract the contents of the zipped folder to a new folder/directory and give it the same name as your extension. (Your archiver software will probably just name it that way for you.)
Below is DownThemAll, extracted: - The folder includes the file install.rdf. You need to add the Pale Moon application block to install.rdf with your plain text editor.
- Open install.rdf with your text editor.
Slowly scroll down until you see application blocks for other browsers.
The block for Pale Moon will be added to the same section.
You can add Pale Moon to the others, or replace them with Pale Moon - your choice.
DownThemAll -> install.rdf --
Application blocks start where marked:
PM application block has been added: - Save install.rdf and close the file.
- If your extension includes a folder called META-INF, delete that folder.
- Select all of the files inside your "extracted" folder, including the edited install.rdf, and zip them up.
Be careful NOT to include the containing folder in the new zipped archive. - Change the archive's file extension from ".zip" to ".xpi" - and you're done.
Just drag your newly minted xpi onto the browser to install.
A FINAL WORD:
When eventually the dual GUID system is removed from Pale Moon, the above procedure will make it possible to install formerly Firefox-only extensions. However it does not guarantee true underlying compatibility, nor that the extension will actually work properly. This will vary by extension, and/or over time as external factors change.