Problems with Add-ons in Firefox 3.6

I upgraded my browser to FireFox 3.6 and I have never had more problems with add-ons than I do now. In fact, it took a bit of research for me to figure out why they weren't working and then to ultimately fix them.

So I downloaded several add-ons. Google Toolbar, FireBug etc.... and nothing would ever ever show up under my Tools Menu in Firefox.

I ran across this great little tip today that worked:

For Windowx XP, From the Start Menu, choose Run and type in:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

It will go to a directory similar to:
C:\Documents and Settings\mindy\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\b6zwdmym.default

There you will find 4 files that start with the name extensions.

Now close completely out of Firefox. Make sure all windows are closed and the application isn't running anywhere on your machine. Go to the directory mentioned above and change extensions.ini, extensions.cache and extensions.rdf to something like old_extensions.ini, old_extensions.cache and old_extensions.rdf

Re-start Firefox and you will likely find many of the add-ons you thought you already installed already there. If you received a -203 error when trying to download add-ons, you'll need to re-install those add-ons but this time they will work.

Enjoy!

Why Installing Eclipse for Android Development is Painful

So today, my goal was to install eclipse and the Android plug-in. It seemed like a reasonable goal. I set aside a chunk of time this afternoon to do it. I was reasonably focused. All of the planets seemed to be aligned.

I am using Ubuntu 9.10 (pretty cutting edge huh?) ;)
Getting eclipse installed was a piece of cake. I used the Ubuntu Software center and it installed like a dream. Now comes the bad part....the Android plug-ins.

I followed these instructions to install the Eclipse Android Developer Plugins using Eclipse 3.5.1 and the default Ubuntu Karmic install. However I was presented with the following error message when clicking "Next":

Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found.
Software being installed: Android Development Tools 0.9.5.v200911191123-20404 (com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.feature.group 0.9.5.v200911191123-20404)
Missing requirement: Android Development Tools 0.9.5.v200911191123-20404 (com.android.ide.eclipse.adt.feature.group 0.9.5.v200911191123-20404) requires 'org.eclipse.wst.xml.ui 0.0.0' but it could not be found

For some reason ubuntu doesn't include the standard update repository for Eclipse by default. To fix this:

* Go to "Help/Install New Software..."
* Add http://download.eclipse.org/releases/galileo/ to the update sites list (strange it's not installed by default on ubuntu)
* From there, install WST (use the filter box to find the package)
* Restart eclipse
* Go back to "Help/Install New Software..." and install the Android ADT as explained on the android website.

Well this is going to fail so before you do the above step, do this:

Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager and search
for "eclipse"

Then mark "eclipse" for install. This package provides the whole
Eclipse SDK, along with the Java Development Tools (JDT) and the
Plugin Development Environment (PDE).

After installed, would be helpful to install Google Plugin tools
(http://dl.google.com/eclipse/plugin/3.5) -- see the steps above.