March 18, 2024
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firefoxI am always excited about a new release of Firefox. I love Firefox for the fast rendering of pages and especially for the extensions that I use Firefox for. Extensions or “Add-Ons” as the Firefox guys call them add a lot of power to the app and lets you get things done very quickly or give you info that would be cumbersome to get if you tried to look for it.

Download the Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 here to try it out.

The new version that is coming that this is a beta of has a new javascript rendering engine. If you are not aware of javascript it is one of the basics that makes web 2.0 fast and javascript is a set of instructions that runs on your computer. The new rendering engine is making Firefox twice as fast as far as I can tell in bringing me info from the web.

One of the problems with any beta of Firefox is that none or almost none of your existing extensions work after the upgrade. There is a fix for this. To get Firefox add ons to work just follow the next few steps.

1. Type about:config into Firefox’s address bar and click the I’ll be careful, I promise! button.
2. Right-click on the Firefox window. Select New > Boolean.
3. When asked to enter the preference name, type extensions.checkCompatibility and click OK.
4. Make sure false is selected/highlighted and click OK.

Now when you restart Firefox everything will be enabled but please remember that if the upgrade broke any of the extensions then they may not work. I have not run into this in the past but it does happen and you will need to wait for the writer of the extension to update it so that it will work again.