With a rather temperemental internet connetion now working in the house (due either to our hardware or the ‘phone line - “Zen”:http://www.zen.co.uk hasn’t decided yet) and the ability to _download_ files, I decided to give “Firebird”:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/ 0.7 a go. Previously I’d used 0.6 and not thought much of it.
So I installed Firebird from the .zip file and started using it. I was impressed enough to make it my default browser on Windows instead of Internet Explorer, something that Opera’s never managed to make me do (despite being much better in many places than both Firebird and Internet Explorer, I find it confusing and complicated to use). However, the basic tabbed browsing annoyed me compared with Opera’s sophisticated stuff.
Which led onto what seems to have been my nemesis: Firebird’s extensions. I went to install the “tabbrowser extensions”:http://white.sakura.ne.jp/~piro/xul/_tabextensions.html.en and ended up installing 2 other extensions as well - the “newsmonster aggregator”:http://newsmonster.org/ and another one to “save the open tabs”:http://www.pikey.me.uk/mozilla/ (not realising that tabbrowser could do this). After this all kinds of strange things seemed to start happening. The browser kept on freezing; the ‘Options’ window wouldn’t open, and the close button for the main browser window wouldn’t work on first click.
So I deleted the Firebird directory from @C:\Program Files@ and also the Phoenix directory from @C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data@. I then reinstalled Firebird using the unofficial Windows installer.
Yet funny things still occurred. The ‘Options’ dialog and download dialogues were the same size as my screen (or slightly bigger). The browser’s also become much slower.
Has anyone found any instructions as to how to clean your system (XP in my case) to do a brand new installation? Or any suggestions as to what the problems can be?
2 comments ↓
here’s how you do it, works every time, no wobbling:
1) Clear cache.
From copied profile on the desktop, copy over cookie.txt, cookieperm.txt, and bookmarks.html.
2) Copy profile and MozillaFirebird directories to desktop.
3) Run the profile manager, delete profile. (”C:\Program Files\blah blah\MozillaFirebird.exe” -p from Start/Run)
4) Delete MozillaFirebird directory from its install location.
5) Extract downloaded ZIP file to its desired location.
6) Run profile manager again, create a new profile.
7) Run Firebird, set preferences in Tools/Options.
9) From Firebird directory on your desktop, copy over any extra installed searches in the searchplugins directory and all files from plugins folder.
10) Install extensions. If you have extensions that keep settings in prefs.js like AdBlock, you can open it up and find the settings in there and import them once you’ve installed it.
Unofficial installer? At that point you might want to google for the gizmo that allows easy install of nightly builds.
wiping your
\documents and settings\[user]\application data\phoenix
directory and subs
as well as
\program files\[firebird]
WILL eliminate your problems
mind you I said delete the ENTIRE directory — and not just delete some files.
you might also want to install extensions to your profile instead of the global chrome folder
Leave a Comment