DG Computers

Finishing their job…

As anyone following my Twitter will know, I’m a massive fan of Google Chrome.  However, one imperative site for me doesn’t work with it – LogMeIn.

I’ve also become a massive fan of the new  Mozilla Prism beta, which basically allows you to turn webpages (such as LogMeIn) into applications. Prism is built on the same framework as Firefox 3, and theoretically add-ons should work on both.

However, two factors can stop this from happening: either the developer neglects to make the extension compatable with Prism at all, or neglected to make it compatable with the latest version of Prism. These are easily fixed.

Ingredients…

- Mozilla Firefox 3.0+
- Mozilla Prism 1.0 Beta standalone app or Firefox extension
- 7-Zip
- A text editor (I use Notepad++)

Create your App…

First, create your app with the setting ‘Show status messages and progress’ ticked.

This will allow you to see the configuration button on the bottom right of the Prism window.  Clicking on it and navigating to Tools > Add-ons… will show you where to drop your .xpi Firefox extension files.

Edit your extensions…

Now go and download the .xpi extension files that you want to work with Prism. Bear in mind, some add-ons will genuinely be incompatible, and anything not certified to work with Firefox 3 or above will almost certainly fail.

Open the .xpi file in 7 Zip – it is just a standard zip file containing other files. Inside that file will be install.rdf which you want to open in Notepad++ or your text editor of choice.  What you will see is something like this:


<RDF xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
xmlns:em="http://www.mozilla.org/2004/em-rdf#">


<Description about="urn:mozilla:install-manifest">
<em:id>LogMeInClient@logmein.com</em:id>
<em:name>LogMeIn, Inc. Remote Access Plugin</em:name>
<em:version>1.0.0.406</em:version>

<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
<em:minVersion>1.5</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

</Description>
</RDF>

Notice the <em:targetApplication> cotainer related to Firefox 1.5 to 3.0.*

We want to add another for Mozilla Prism upto, and so between </em:targetApplication> and </Description> we want to add:

<!-- Prism -->
<em:targetApplication>
<Description>
<em:id>prism@developer.mozilla.org</em:id>
<em:minVersion>0.9</em:minVersion>
<em:maxVersion>1.9.*</em:maxVersion>
</Description>
</em:targetApplication>

You then save the file, 7 Zip will prompt you to update the file in the archive, which you say yes to, and you can then drag the .xpi into the Add-ons area of your Prism application, and install it as you would in Firefox.

I did this initially to get LogMeIn’s Firefox plugin to work with Prism to give me a web app of my LogMeIn console, but it could work with a multitude of add-ons.