How to install Adblock Plus in Prism 0.9
by introspectif
UPDATE (9/11/2008): I’ve found a nicer way to do this. For your convenience, here’s Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5 for Prism, created using the same instructions.
(Mac OS X Tiger users only) You have battled with your Prism app just to visit the Firefox Addons page to install Adblock Plus. You click the install link: the addon file downloads, but after that, you get a message saying,
Adblock Plus 0.7.5.4 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Prism 0.9.
The hacker in you sees that there are a few options:
BugPolitely request the Adblock Plus development team to include Prism in the list of supported browsers.- Trick Prism into believing that the addon is compatible.
- Disable compatibility checking in Prism.
I am too impatient to do (1), and I haven’t figured out how to do (2). So I decided to do (3):
- Install the Prism for Firefox 0.2 addon.
- Close all running instances of Firefox or Prism.
- Find a file named
webrunner-prefs.jsin your computer. - Edit that file in a text editor, adding the following line:
pref("extensions.checkCompatibility", false); - Save and close the file.
Now try installing Adblock Plus again. It should now install successfully, albeit with a warning that the addon is not compatible. (But who better than you to decide if an addon is compatible, right?) When you restart Prism, Adblock Plus should be present when you open the Addons dialog.
Kindly feedback if this worked for you.
Tip: This works for other addons too.
Comments
Ha! Thanks works!
I find it strange that Prism can’t support add-ons by default though…
thanks for the tip, i’m gonna link to it on my blog!
Great stuff! :)
Prism _does_ support add-ons by default. But add-ons are designed to work with specific host applications. You can’t just willy-nilly drop add-ons into different hosts and expect them to work.
In this case, we get lucky – but the typical AdBlock UI doesn’t exist.
Trying steps #1 and #2 would be better :)
Hi Mark
It’s great to have you respond on this. I guess many people (including myself) have been trying to get the addons working, but they have failed — causing much frustration. Maybe the documentation for how to get addons to work is lacking, or unclear.
Perhaps you could provide more (official) information in the forums or on the Prism page on MozillaWiki? Start with how to install Adblock ;-)
i understand that the add-ons are designed to be compatible with specific versions etc, but doesn’t prism run on Firefox as it’s base?
Yes, it does. But when installing addons in Prism, the version of Prism is checked, instead of the version of Firefox. So this has made installing addons really difficult.
(2) is relatively easy too implement as well – see http://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2229
AdBlockPlus 0.7.5.4 worked allright with Prism 0.9.0, however, I haven’t been able to get either 0.7.5.4 nor 0.7.5.5 to work with 0.9.1 :(