crazed monkey

I’ve received a few hits from people searching for “xpi uninstall” or “mozilla xpi uninstall” from Google. As it turns out, my weblog is #1 for those keywords, even outranking the Mozilla troubleshooting FAQ. As a follow-up to this post, I will tell you that there is no way to uninstall XPI packages. This is a known bug in Mozilla 1.0 and has been for quite some time. You are probably out of luck and might have to uninstall and then reinstall Mozilla. There might be a way to manually remove the package from Mozilla’s registry and RDF files, but it’s not obvious. If you find a way, please publish a link to the instructions.

So how does Optimoz perform the uninstall? Looking at the Optimoz preferences code it appears as though the developers have taken the code used to uninstall themes and hacked it to uninstall their XPI package. Look for the mozgestUninstall() function in that source file to get a better idea of what is going on. It appears that Optimoz is installed in the Chrome registry. On uninstall, the package is removed from the registry and all references to Optimoz are removed from Mozilla’s RDF files.

That Mozilla does not even provide its developers with a proper method of uninstalling installed XPI applications is horribly poor planning. A sure sign of things gone awry is when third-party developers have to produce hacks to obtain basic functionality which should have been supplied automatically. Unfortunately, this happens all too often in the world of development. Before I die, I hope everyone can finally get it right.

Posted on November 15th, 2002 in computers - No Comments »

Plate Tektonics Crew member Nicodemus will be DJing at Volume (577 King St. West, Toronto) for Electro Flow Thursdays. Joining him will be Cryogenetic and Gadjet. There is no cover. I will probably be there.

Posted on November 13th, 2002 in culture, music - No Comments »

I stumbled across Naomi Klein’s NoLogo weblog a while back but never really became a frequent visitor. When I found myself talking to Vic about No Logo and how Naomi Klein had a weblog based on Slash, I mentioned that I didn’t think that nologo.org had an RSS feed. I was wrong, it does.

Posted on November 12th, 2002 in computers, internet - No Comments »

This anti-fur ad, paid for by PETA has got to be one of the best print ads I have ever seen. Stunning.

Posted on November 12th, 2002 in politics - No Comments »

I noticed this entry from Adam Curry’s Weblog expounding on Newsmonster in my aggregator just now. Newsmonster is a Java-based aggregator which integrates itself inside of Mozilla using XPI. I downloaded both the Java Webstart installer and the XPI installer. The installation was slick and painless, I’ll grant that. However, the Java aggregator was slow and painful, taking over half an hour to index some 100-odd feeds, which it didn’t even properly complete. When I restarted Mozilla, an empty sidebar suddenly appeared which I could not remove. Fine, Newsmonster is not ready for prime time; let me just uninstall that puppy. Oh, that’s right, I can’t. Nor can I check the mailing list archives for details on how to uninstall. Subscribing to said mailing list doesn’t seem to be working either, as I receive an error message once I try to confirm the subscription. In short, I am now stuck with an empty side bar taking up 20% of my Mozilla window.

This is not the first time this has happened when installing a XPI application. A few months ago, I installed Mozblog, which I couldn’t get working. No uninstall. Optimoz, however, works great and has an uninstall, so I at least know it is possible to uninstall XPI applications in Mozilla.

Developers, if you’re going to have an installer, at least have a corresponding uninstaller. Maybe this is Mozilla’s fault for not providing an interface to properly install and uninstall applications. As it stands, I will probably have to uninstall and reinstall Mozilla to get rid of these pesky XPI applications. At least I know that I can do that.

Update: Apparently I am not the only one having problems with NewsMonster. I agree, the app looks promising but is quite rough around the edges.

Posted on November 12th, 2002 in computers - No Comments »