As Firefox releases continue to come out, it’s important to be aware of the compatibility issues that may arise. This week’s release of Firefox 43 has a number of new features and changes, and some of these may not work with older versions of the browser. Here are some tips on how to make sure your Firefox installation is up to date:

  1. Make sure you have the latest version of Mozilla Firefox installed. This can be found in the “My Computer” section of your Windows Start menu.
  2. Check for updates to Firefox in the “My Computer” section of your Windows Start menu and install them if necessary.
  3. Make sure you have all the required files for Mozilla Firefox installed on your computer. These files can be found in the “Mozilla Firefox” folder on your hard drive. If you don’t have this folder, you can create it by following these steps: a) Open a command prompt and type “mkdir -p MozillaFirefox” b) Type “cd MozillaFirefox” c) Type “ln -s ../MozillaFirefox/firefox-43/libexec/” d) Type “cmake ../MozillaFirefox/firefox-43 make” e) Type “sudo make install” f) Restart Mozilla Firefox

Before

Here is a look at the “Add-ons Manager Window” for our Firefox install. Not much in the way of details and certainly no easy way to determine if all of the extensions will be compatible with an upcoming release. A person could check for compatibility issues the hard way by going to the Mozilla Add-ons page for each…

After

As soon as you have installed the extension there is a very important bit of information added to each entry. You can easily see what versions of Firefox that each extension is compatible with. No more “wondering if”… A “manual compatibility check button” will also be added at the bottom of the window (but can be removed in the “Options”).

Options

The options are extremely simple…decide if you want to have automatic compatibility checking enabled and whether you would like to have the “manual check button” displayed or not.

Note: The “Options Window” will have “Favmarks Preferences” as the title so do not be surprised when you see it.

Conclusion

If you are wanting an easy way to know if your favorite extensions are compatible with an upcoming Firefox release then it does not get much easier than this.

Links

Download the Is It Compatible? extension (Mozilla Add-ons)