Incompatible Extensions

It doesn’t seem to happen very often, but you may run into a situation where one extension doesn’t behave too well with another extension.

Let’s take a fictional example:

Let’s say that the All-in-One Sidebar is my newest extension. But after installing it, I notice a problem — the context menu doesn’t appear when I right-click on my screen.

Evidently, All-in-One Sidebar is incompatible with one of my other extensions.

But which one?

To find out, I go down my list of extensions and disable them one-by-one to find the incompatible one:

 

 

In the example above, I start with ChatZilla. I click on the “Disable” button, and then restart my browser. Take note that I am not uninstalling ChatZilla, but merely disabling it. This means that ChatZilla will be unusable when I restart Firefox, but it will not be deleted from my system.

After restarting Firefox, I notice the context menu still refuses to appear….Evidently the problem isn’t ChatZilla.

So I re-enable ChatZilla, by clicking on the “Enable” button, and disable the next extension which is ClearURLButton:

 

 

 

After restarting Firefox, I right-click on my screen and YES the context menu appears!

So All-In-One Sidebar is incompatible with ClearURLButton. (Remember, this is a fictional example. In reality, these extensions are compatible.)

Now that I’ve found the incompatibility, I have a choice to make:

  • Deal with the fact that the two extensions are incompatible and live without the context menu.

  • Uninstall All-in-One Sidebar.

  • Uninstall ClearURLButton.

Multiple Incompatibilites

What if, after going through the entire list of extensions, the problem still persists? In this case, and this has yet to happen to me, your new extension may be incompabile with several of the others.

Using the aforementioned All-in-One Sidebar example, you’d deal with the problem this way:

  • Disable all of your extensions, except All-in-One Sidebar.
  • Re-enable each extension one-by-one and take note of which extensions work, and which don’t.

You’ve got to really love your new extension if you’re willing to go through all of that work. But if you do, it’ll be worth it.

Many times, the developer will make note of any incompatibilities. But since there are thousands of extensions, it’s highly unlikely the developer will be aware of every one.

So before you decide to dump Firefox because it doesn’t work anymore, check for incompatible extensions. It may be the source of your problem.