The official release of Firefox’s latest version 3.5 is available for download by the non-beta-testing public today.
The folks at Mozilla Add-ons do a great job of nudging their extension authors to make their work compatible with new versions. Still, a few add-ons aren’t there yet, notably Google Gears (not hosted at Mozilla Add-ons) and Tab Mix Plus. Update: Testers tell me a developer build of Tab Mix Plus is Firefox 3.5 compatible. Thanks all!
Luckily when you install Firefox 3.5 you get a warning upfront of which of your installed add-ons aren’t yet compatible, like the one I got today, pictured here. (Come on, Auto Copy and Evernote, get with the three-point-five!)
Here are a few others my Twitter followers are missing.
Yesterday I said:
Firefox 3.5 to drop tomorrow, yay! Testers, which of your most beloved add-ons aren’t compatible yet?
StephanieBamBam said, “Firebug!!! Everything else I use has been updated, it’s wacky to me that firebug still doesn’t work.” Editor: Firebug got updated!
kerim said, “I use Nightly Tester Tools to get compatibility, but Google Gears won’t work even with that hack. Hoping they’ll update w/ 3.5.”
GuiAmbros said, “CopyAllUrls. Plasser (the author) is working on it, but no ETA yet =(“
acidflask said, “google gears!!!”
sastubblefield said, “Aardvark, and Measureit are the only ones I use that aren’t compatible.”
NguyenNoir said, “aside from the ACE Safari theme, all my addons work just fine (oh yeah)”
billhelm said, “TabMix Plus. I uninstalled the RC yesterday because I can’t stand firefox without it!”
MrMileage said, “Better GReader, GoogleAdvCookieOptOut, Drag&Drop.io, Google Gears” Editor: Better GReader is compatible!
tjunkie said, “I have so many useless extensions that works and it has to be google gears that is not compatible”
garygiffordjr said, “the last holdout for me is Verisign Seat Belt.”
her_boyscout said, “seriously missing “gears” add-on…”
akumu said, “opendownload. Allows me to open downloads without having to save them first.”
failedidealist said, “TabMixPlus :(“
Rooster212 said, “Smart Bookmarks isn’t compatable as far as i know :(“
stephanpeterson said, “system proxy on the mac hasn’t been updated for FF 3.5”
DavidWmBrown said, “”Copy Plain Text” and “Morning Coffee” are not currently working with Firefox 3.5″
melalegre said, “I’d like to have NoScript, AdBlock, GoogleGears, and GreaseMonkey fully running in FF 3.5.”
ClintStrong said, “Tab Mix Plus is the main one I’m missing.”
SteveFalatko said, “- sage … yes I still use RSS feeds and sage is my favorite. Not compatible with 3.5”
scotmathis said, “Beloved add-on not compatible with FF 3.5: Tab Mix Plus”
Ledlow said, “Automatic Save Folder didn’t update after Beta 4, so I’m hoping for an update with the release”
PhYoshi said, “Judging by the fact nothing has broken, 3.5 seems to be pretty awesome compatiibilitywise (TMP, DtA, AioS, stylish, twitterfox)”
forpus said, “no problems with Nightly Tester Tools, http://is.gd/1iPcz“
Thanks to everyone who replied. Here’s more on why and how I’m using Twitter to run surveys like this.
Firefox 3.5 [Mozilla]
9 Comments
Justin Doub
Isn’t Google Gears kinda obsolete with 3.5’s location awareness and html5?
tigsfan
I noticed that Evernote has been updated and is compatible with 3.5 Also, if the extension ever stops working, you can use the equally amazing web clipper bookmarklet.
Jacob Roeland
@Justin
Gears also enables you to save your web work so that you can still access it offline. Google Docs and Remember the Milk both do that I know.
Justin Doub
@Jacob I think that is also possible with html5.
AJ Robins
The Firefox addon compatibility page is at: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/compatibility/report
xenetic
Nightly Tester Tools
Forces incompatible to work even if they’re not all the way up to date. Of course it could easily break some add ons, but in my experience everything has worked fine.
Mike Cerm
@Jacob and Justin:
Some offline caching is possible with HTML5, true, however Google would have to support it – i.e. rewrite Gmail to take advantage of the caching capability. It’s also likely that there’s more to Google Gears than merely providing a local cache, so Google is likely to continue to develop Gears regardless of if/when they start supporting HTML5 caching.
As for today’s release, I’m always stunned when hugely popular extensions don’t update prior to official releases. How long since the first beta was released, a few months? I know it’s been at least a week for the RC. Often, it’s just a matter of increasing the max version (though that doesn’t necessarily apply to Gears). Regardless, they should have been prepared.
I remember upgrading to Vista about a month before the official consumer launch, and Nvidia still didn’t have working drivers for my graphics card. It was infuriating, because Vista had already shipped to businesses 2 months prior, and Vista was RTM months before that (and Beta for who knows how long). Nvidia was totally unprepared, despite about 6 months of Beta or better code to test against.
Jacob Roeland
@Justin @Mike
I also just thought of this. During the Google Wave demo, they drug pictures from their desktop directly into the wave. One of the developers mentioned that that one feature is the only action that required Gears and everything else is just HTML5. So that’s also something that HTML5 can’t do that Gears can.
But it doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll have both installed. 😉
Michael Harmon
I was able to go to the Tab Mix Plus website and get a development xpi which works with Firefox 3.5. Go to Forum and then Builds tab…. http://tmp.garyr.net