{"id":6,"date":"2007-01-06T17:21:47","date_gmt":"2007-01-06T16:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/06\/firefox-extensions-google-toolbar-and-freebsd\/"},"modified":"2007-01-06T18:40:25","modified_gmt":"2007-01-06T17:40:25","slug":"firefox-extensions-google-toolbar-and-freebsd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/06\/firefox-extensions-google-toolbar-and-freebsd\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefox extensions, Google Toolbar and FreeBSD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=pbeyssac\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been a user of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mozilla.com\/en-US\/firefox\/\">Firefox<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/tools\/firefox\/toolbar\/\">Google Toolbar<\/a> for some time. Everything went fine until, last summer, I upgraded my Firefox. I discovered then that the recent releases of the toolbar refuse to be installed on <a title=\"FreeBSD web site\" href=\"http:\/\/www.freebsd.org\/\">FreeBSD<\/a>, which happens to be the operating system I use. And, logically enough, FreeBSD is not listed in Google Toolbar&#8217;s FAQ on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/support\/firefox\/bin\/answer.py?answer=45095&#038;ctx=sibling\">compatible systems<\/a>. Yet previous revisions of the Toolbar worked just fine under FreeBSD!<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nNever mind that web platforms such as Firefox are interesting precisely because they are mostly OS-independent, allowing the distribution of almost totally portable software. To make a long story short, I contacted Google support in August (ticket #71966743) asking that they re-enable FreeBSD support and they replied that <em>Although Firefox can run on BSD, the Toolbar currently doesn&#8217;t support BSD,<\/em> which wasn&#8217;t very helpful.<\/p>\n<p>So is this just a mere corporate support policy problem? Apparently it is, because I happen to have found a solution which works just fine under FreeBSD (and certainly others &#8220;unsupported&#8221; operating systems).<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Read and accept the <a title=\"l\" href=\"http:\/\/tools.google.com\/firefox\/toolbar\/install.html\">Google Toolbar license<\/a><\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">Get the Linux <code>.xpi<\/code> archive from <a title=\"Google Toolbar XPI for Linux\" href=\"http:\/\/dl.google.com\/firefox\/google-toolbar-linux.xpi\">http:\/\/dl.google.com\/firefox\/google-toolbar-linux.xpi<\/a><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>It&#8217;s basically a ZIP file, so just <code>unzip<\/code> it in an empty directory<\/li>\n<li>Edit the file <code>install.rdf<\/code><\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\" \/>Find the line that reads<code> &lt;em:targetPlatform&gt;Linux&lt;\/em:targetPlatform&gt;<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\" \/>Change it to <code>&lt;em:targetPlatform&gt;FreeBSD&lt;\/em:targetPlatform&gt;<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\"><code>zip<\/code> the archive back as (for example) <code>google-toolbar-freebsd.xpi<\/code><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"left\">Load it into Firefox using a <code>file:\/\/\/yourlocalpath\/google-toolbar-freebsd.xpi<\/code> URL.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>and <em>voil\u00e0<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ain&#8217;t that easy? It is, you only need to think of fetching the <code>.xpi<\/code> directly, which a friend suggested yesterday to me. Sorry, I can&#8217;t distribute the resulting <code>.xpi<\/code> file (yet?), because the license says I need to contact Google first to get permission. I will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been a user of Firefox and the Google Toolbar for some time. Everything went fine until, last summer, I upgraded my Firefox. I discovered then that the recent releases of the toolbar refuse to be installed on FreeBSD, which happens to be the operating system I use. And, logically enough, FreeBSD is not listed &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/06\/firefox-extensions-google-toolbar-and-freebsd\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Firefox extensions, Google Toolbar and FreeBSD<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/signal.eu.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}