Posted by James | Posted in Firefox | Posted on 27-01-2011
Sometimes you’ll find that a user requests a Firefox Add-On in a managed environment, or perhaps you need to send out a Firefox extension to multiple users at once. Because installations are on a per-user basis, often you can’t just install the Add-On as the user due to Group Policy settings and permissions, but if you log on as an Administrator that will install the extension for them rather than the original user. There is a way around this though!
First, find the Firefox extension you wish to install – in this case we’ll use Screengrab as an example – it’s a really useful tool if you need to get screenshots of browser windows, and one of our users needed it to capture Google Analytics screens. Download the xpi file by right-clicking the green button and choosing Save Link:
Once the file is downloaded, use WinRAR or similar to extract the xpi file to a new folder. You’ll probably need to tell Windows which program to use to open the file, it doesn’t know to open an xpi by default. Within the folder, find the file named install.rdf and open it in a text editor. Find the ID string as shown and copy it to the clipboard:
Rename the folder to match this string, including the curly braces:
Now copy this folder into the Firefox extensions folder on the users machine – usually something like C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\extensions – make sure they’re not running it at the time or weirdness may occur.
Next time they start Firefox, they should get a pop-up telling them that the Add On has been installed.
