Post #228

Firefox errors and Firebird extensions

9th February 2004, late evening | Comments (41)

Mozilla Firefox logo

Quick tip: if, when you try and load Firefox 0.8, you find that you’re faced with an error message such as Error launching browser window:no XBL binding for browser, take a good look at the extensions you already have loaded into Firebird.

I found that ‘Tabbrowser Extensions’, previously installed in Firebird, was causing a fatal error when Firefox tried to start.

I disabled the extension in Firebird, reloaded Firefox (no errors this time), then nipped off and reloaded the extension into my lovely new browser.

Smiles and pats on the back all round.

Note: You can find most extensions for Firefox at the Extension Room.

Bravo: Well done Mr Hicks on the Firefox logo!

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Comments (41)

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  1. .sara:

    THAT was driving me batty. Danke. (:

    Posted 12 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  2. Dunstan:

    Ah! I'm glad it helped someone else out :o)

    Posted 20 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ .sara
  3. DarkBlue:

    Dunstan you lucky b%$*!&d, you managed to download Firefox. It seems to be virtually impossible to get at the moment due to server load. Does anyone know of any mirrors?

    Also, the issue you are discussing here is documented on the Mozilla website: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/#install

    Posted 23 minutes after the fact
  4. Colly:

    I'm just knocked out by it. I thought Safari was my true love but I've finally kicked it into touch. I'm on a rubbish UK NTL broadband connection at home that caches style sheets for days and days, but using Firefox with the instant CSS edit thing that Hicks discussed has revolutionised my homework.
    http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/archives/000374.php

    Thanks chaps...

    Posted 23 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Martin Sweeney
  5. David:

    If, like me, you deleted Firebird a while back but want to give Firefox a go, and are getting the error Dunstan describes, you'll need to go into your profile directory [e.g. in Win XP it'll be something like "C:Documents and SettingsDavidPhoenix"] and remove any leftover extension directories you find there.

    Posted 36 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ David
  6. David:

    Oops, my backslashes got stripped. Hope that still makes sense. :)

    Posted 38 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ David
  7. Darice:

    Oh people come on :) It says clearly on the Firefox page to disable all Firebird extencion before installing Firefox. I got lucky and downloaded the file this morning after four tries and had it running smoothly in no time. I have the install file on another host for download while Mozilla is still overloaded.

    Anyone had success already with getting new themes? The Tips and Tricks page at texturizer has been down/slow for the whole day.

    Posted 41 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  8. Aaron:

    Not to be snarky or make you all hit yourselves on the head a second time, but on the Firefox page there are installation instructions (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/#install):

    "First, if you are running an old version of Firebird or Phoenix, visit the Extensions panel in Tools, Options and disable all of your extensions. If you cannot disable extensions, you must create a new profile before upgrading to Firefox 0.8. If you do not do this, your browser may not work, and you may receive messages like 'Cannot create XBL Binding for Browser' or 'Cannot create Browser Instance.'"

    Posted 43 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  9. Aaron:

    Oops, Darice beat me to the punch. Apologies.

    Posted 44 minutes after the fact
  10. Margaret:

    can anyone tell me if installing firefox is going to get rid of my current bookmarks in firebird? apparently they assume people know what happens in cases like these, but i've never upgraded a browser before. should i backup my bookmarks, and if so, how do i do that?

    Posted 48 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan, ↓ Syam Kumar
  11. Nis Sarup:

    I have had problems with downloading FireFox too.
    Until I noticed the many mirrors available: http://www.mozilla.org/mirrors.html#secondaries
    Now Im downloading happily from the German mirror.
    Cant wait to try it out :)

    Posted 54 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ DarkBlue
  12. Jake:

    Aaaaahhhhh! So much better. Thank you kind sir.

    Posted 1 hour, 21 minutes after the fact
  13. Sergio:

    Since Texturizer has been slashdotted to hell, all those in need of Firefox extensions can go to this nifty place:

    http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/

    Works like a charm.

    Posted 1 hour, 48 minutes after the fact
  14. DarkBlue:

    Thank you Nis. Somehow I didn't think to look around the Mozilla website for mirrors?!?!!

    Downloading now...

    Posted 1 hour, 58 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Nis Sarup
  15. Chris Neale:

    UK mirror : http://www.mirror.ac.uk/sites/ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.8/

    note: newbies + Fx + TBE = trouble

    I do without the bloat of TBE, TBP is quite adequate, plus TabWarning

    and of course my own stuff : )

    Posted 2 hours, 2 minutes after the fact
  16. Dunstan:

    Darice, Aaron - Documentation?! Good god people, I'm a techy! I don't have time to read the carefully written, and obviously placed documentation!

    Whatever will they think of next?

    ;o)

    Posted 2 hours, 14 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Darice, ↑ Aaron
  17. Dunstan:

    I didn't back my bookmarks up and everything is fine in the new browser... but I haven't uninstalled my old copy of FB yet.

    Posted 2 hours, 18 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Margaret
    Inspired: ↓ Margaret, ↓ .csant
  18. Margaret:

    never mind, firefox uses the phoenix profile stuff- that's not changed. so all your bookmarks, themes, extensions, history, and everything else useful persist between installations. v. clever, i think.

    Posted 2 hours, 41 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Dunstan
    Inspired: ↓ .csant
  19. Kitta:

    I am downloading it right now while my lunch cooks. Food and Firefox to play with, what more could I want. :o)

    Posted 8 hours, 18 minutes after the fact
  20. Nil:

    Another tip,
    Switch to dth default theme if you don't see any scrollbars.

    Markus

    Posted 10 hours, 25 minutes after the fact
  21. McChris:

    50% of download complete...I canae wait to have a new toy to play with...

    Posted 12 hours, 48 minutes after the fact
  22. .csant:

    imho it is not a very good idea to use the same profile without asking you first if you'd like to - if not carefull, you might mess up your old profile. i run them both for testing purposes, and i definetly want to keep profiles separate. not that it is a difficult issue, but since they even renamed the application, one would expect it to have it's own profile...

    Posted 13 hours, 50 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Dunstan, ↑ Margaret
    Inspired: ↓ Syam Kumar
  23. Andy:

    Some of the old extensions won't work with Firefox as they did with Firebird. Both Tabbrowser Extensions and RSS Reader (the two I couldn't live without) have updated versions for Firefox

    http://fls.moo.jp/moz/rssreader.html

    http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/tbe

    Really like the new extension installation UI by the way. Hmmmm.

    Posted 15 hours, 7 minutes after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Waylman
  24. Mark Wubben:

    I simply removed the FireBird directory and my profile.. that provided an easy way of getting rid of useless extensions as well.

    Unfortunately it has proven harder for me to download new extensions than to download Firefox, even extensionsroom didn't respond.

    And yes, I've backed up my profile directory :)

    Posted 16 hours, 12 minutes after the fact
  25. Martin Sweeney:

    Colly;

    If you're having problems with NTL caching style sheets, then change your proxy server.

    See : http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/trancache.html

    just put in your new proxy and port (eg cache1-brhm.server.ntli.net port: 8080) in the Tools -> Options -> Connection Settings, Advanced (or something similar) and whack in the details there.

    HTH

    M.

    Posted 16 hours, 14 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Colly
    Inspired: ↓ Colly
  26. Waylman:

    Thanks Andy. Those are the 2 extensions I really needed as well.

    Posted 16 hours, 15 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Andy
  27. Colly:

    Thanks Martin,
    Sounds like a great solution - I'll try it tonight.
    Have to say CSS Edit is rocking my world now - no going back. At least it lets me see results of changes, then copy paste into the CSS file and ftp it, knowing that non-NTL users see what I hope I'll see at some point....

    Posted 16 hours, 28 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Martin Sweeney
  28. Syam Kumar:

    I created a new profile using firebird and copied my bookmarks.html file to the new profile directory before installing firefox. Then I removed my old profile from firefox's 'profile manager' (But did not delete the profile directory) and started firefox with the new profile.

    Posted 21 hours, 28 minutes after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Margaret, ↑ .csant
  29. Sian:

    Whats the difference between Firefox and Firebird?

    Posted 23 hours, 14 minutes after the fact
  30. Sian:

    Scrub my last question spotted that Firebird has been renamed to Firefox.

    Posted 23 hours, 18 minutes after the fact
  31. DarkBlue:

    Hmmm... Seems a little bit flakey to me, surprisingly not as stable as Firebird.

    I have scrollbars disappearing, back and next controls disabled, printing very screwed up. Seems very reluctant to install themes.

    I've switched back to Firebird for now, perhaps a new nightly build, in a week or so, will realise a more stable product.

    I have high hopes.

    Posted 1 day after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Margaret
  32. Margaret:

    darkblue- the scrollbar/back/next probs are theme related. open up your options panel, and go to the page that will hopefully be linked in the description of your favorite theme. i use breeze. at that page, see if the theme creator has created a new verison for firefox. if so, install it. that should clear up the scrollbar/back/forward button problems. it did for me, anyway.

    Posted 1 day, 1 hour after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ DarkBlue
    Inspired: ↓ DarkBlue
  33. DarkBlue:

    Thank you Margaret. Everything seems to be ticking along nicely now. Cheers.

    Posted 1 day, 1 hour after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Margaret
  34. Dynamic Performance:

    I hateto sound like a noob, but can someone tell me how to install firefox on linux?? I am new to linux, and while surfing online documentation, i want to use a better browser, the firefox installation directions are a little lacking. An e-mail with directions, detailed plz i am really new, would be very nice. Thanks.

    Posted 1 week, 5 days after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Syam Kumar
  35. Jansen:

    I've found another problem, but just dunno how to solve. i installed firefox and found that the scrollbar is not there. any ideas?

    Posted 1 week, 6 days after the fact
    Inspired: ↓ Dunstan
  36. Syam Kumar:

    Dynamic Performance,

    Download the Linux version (the .tar.gz one), extract it, and place the extracted directory anywhere. If you are the only user in your computer, just place it anywhere in your home directory (No need to login as root).

    Inside the directory, there is a shell script named "MozillaFirefox" . Create a link to it in your /bin or ~/bin directory. Now you can run it from commandline by typing the link's name. You can also put a shortcut/launcher in your kde or gnome desktop.

    Posted 2 weeks after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Dynamic Performance
  37. Dunstan:

    Jansen, that happened to me at www.dabs.com - but I found that resizing the page brought the scrollbars back.

    But it's only happened on one site to me, so sorry, I can't help you out there.

    Posted 2 weeks after the fact
    Inspired by: ↑ Jansen
  38. Drahgun:

    Installed FireFox 0.8 . . . loaded some extentions and tried a skin. It told me I had to restart FireFox for the skin to change. After I closed out of FireFox and started it up again. I got the error XBL could not be created for browser. I uninstalled the program and tried to reinstall it but still gave me the error. I looked for a profile but could not find one. Anybody have any ideas.

    P3 1G
    256 SDRAM
    128 ATI Radeon 9600SE
    Windows XP Pro

    Posted 2 months, 3 weeks after the fact
  39. Stefan Wallin:

    Using firefox under Linux I wonder if there's a way to get rid of the profilemanager, it seems to fuck up totallay now and then, it complains of that a profile is already running and that I have to create a new one to start firefox. Although there aren't any sessions of firefox active, btw.. This almost only occur if I have closed the browser or when my battery drain out without me noticing it(laptop). Help anyone? Is there any PID-file I should remove? Is there a way to disable multiple profile's??

    Posted 3 months after the fact
  40. Elias Hickman:

    Running win2003 enterprise server, I had to delete c:..documents and settings..application data...mozilla..profiles..xlsR98sf87.tt to get rid of the XBL error message (the xlsR98sf87.tt is the profile file that firefox uses).

    Note: I have tried unsuccessfully to have shared profiles between Win and Linux...anyone have any ideas.
    Thanks again, everyone..Especially David. Your input really helped narrow things down a bit.
    Cheers!

    Posted 3 months, 3 weeks after the fact
  41. Montag:

    Anyone having trouble with version 1.0.4 not loading pages but on next try loads fine. Also if in secure area pages fail to load with connection refused. More than one site tried on secure problem and restarting FF seems to work for a while 10-15 min then refused connection error again.

    Posted 1 year, 3 months after the fact

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