How Easy Is It To Downgrade Firefox?

Yesterday I had to downgrade my Firefox to version 3.5.8 from 3.6. Why? Add-on issues. I’ve been having them ever since I upgraded to 3.6. But when this one broke, in this fashion:

..that was the last straw because I use it routinely.

The worst part about being a Firefox user is when add-ons bust. Every time Mozilla releases an update to the browser, it’s a sad tradition that one or more of your add-ons will either lose some important functionality (as the S3 add-on did), or it will just cease to work altogether. Fervent Firefox users like myself grit our teeth whenever we see the “you have an update” notice, because the same question goes through all our minds – what’s going to break this time?

This is not to say that Firefox is a bad browser. I consider it to be the best out there. Some may disagree with me, and that’s fine, but it’s what I personally believe.

What makes Firefox great more than anything else is its very large database of add-ons. You can extend the functionality of it to be much more than just a simple web browser. Heck, you can even edit animated PNG graphics in Firefox.

The problem however is that all your add-ons are little mini-apps tied to a single engine, and if that engine upon upgrade says, “No, sorry, this doesn’t work anymore”, that’s a serious drawback because you don’t want to lose any of those little apps.

It’s not necessarily a good idea to run an older Firefox, but if you have to for add-on compatibility, this is the way to go about it:

Downloading an older Firefox

Where?

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/

Which to pick?

The latest version of the previous release. If you scroll to the bottom of the list from the link above, you’ll see latest-3.0, latest-3.5 and so on. My add-ons worked in the last version, so I went with latest-3.5, which happens to be v3.5.8.

Backing up add-ons and other preferences (optional)

FEBE is the best way to backup your add-ons and preferences from Firefox. Instead of having to re-download all your add-ons, you can have FEBE place all of them in a folder for quick install after downgrading if required (see next section).

Uninstall required?

Usually it’s the case where you don’t have to uninstall a new Firefox to downgrade to an older one – if the versions are close enough. A downgrade from 3.6 to 3.5.8 in Windows does not require you to uninstall 3.6 first. You simply close Firefox, run the 3.5.8 installer and everything is kept as is, add-ons, preferences and all. The only time it wouldn’t is if you have one or more add-ons that require 3.6 to run.

If you have versions that are too far apart, such as from 3.6 to 2.0.0.20, this would require a full uninstall of 3.6 first.

Can you run multiple versions of Firefox at the same time?

With a little profile trickery, yes it can be done. If you want to run 2.0.0.20, 3.5.8 and 3.6 all at the same time, it’s very do-able. I don’t recommend doing it, but it’s possible.

What’s the best way to check up on add-on support in current releases of Firefox?

Unfortunately the only way to do it is by manually going to the add-on page itself for the add-on you want, and reading the comments at the very bottom to see what other problems users are encountering, if any.

Remember: Just because an add-on is listed as “compatible” for the current version of Firefox does not mean it’s going to work 100% correctly. This is especially true right after a new version of Firefox is released.

The add-on database is, said politely, still a work in progress. :)

What’s your experience with Firefox 3.6 and add-ons?

Mine was good until the S3 add-on debacle where I was more or less forced to downgrade to 3.5.8 to make it work. I would much rather prefer to run 3.6, but I need that S3 add-on to work 100% as well as a few others.

How was your experience?