Is this a hijack? "open with" message bar and donate button
Has my firefox been hijacked?
Firefox 14.0.1 on my mac opened with a black message bar just below the URL field, with a "Donate" button at the right side of the bar.
"Open With has been updated to version 5.2.1. Please consider making a donation to the project."
I could not find "Open With" in the Tools->Add-on window. I googled "Open With" and found a reference to this slavic page:
https://addons.mozilla.org/mn/firefox/addon/open-with/versions/5.2.1
Is this part of the firefox package? Has my firefox been compromised? If so, what should I do?
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Never mind. I discovered that "Open With" is an extension that I installed 1-2 months ago because of an Adobe PDF problem with firefox. Firefox no longer includes hyperlinks when it generates a PDF file, so as a workaround I installed this extension which allows me to launch Safari on the webpage. I can generate a good pdf file from Safari.
I'm just surprised that a legitimate extension developer would pop up a message bar asking for a donation like that.
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I've uploaded an image of my homepage when I first open firefox.
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Never mind. I discovered that "Open With" is an extension that I installed 1-2 months ago because of an Adobe PDF problem with firefox. Firefox no longer includes hyperlinks when it generates a PDF file, so as a workaround I installed this extension which allows me to launch Safari on the webpage. I can generate a good pdf file from Safari.
I'm just surprised that a legitimate extension developer would pop up a message bar asking for a donation like that.
That is an update notification from the "Open With" extension as you've guessed.
It is possible that there is a problem with the file(s) that store the extensions registry.
Delete the files extensions.* (e.g. extensions.sqlite, extensions.ini, extensions.cache) and compatibility.ini in the Firefox profile folder to reset the extensions registry.
New files will be created when required.
See "Corrupt extension files":
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Unable_to_install_themes_or_extensions
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Unable+to+install+add-ons
If you see disabled, not compatible, extensions in "Tools > Add-ons > Extensions" then click the Tools button at the left side of the Search Bar (or click the "Find Updates" button in older Firefox versions) to check if there is a compatibility update available.
If this hasn't helped then also try to delete the addons.sqlite file.
If you do not keep changes to setings after a restart then see:
hello cor-el, i'm not sure why you have given me the above instructions to reset the extensions registry. It seems that the extension works the way the developer intended, i.e., it asks me to donate.
Once I figured out that the popup was from an extension I had willingly installed, my question became more about ethics than technology. I.e., is the developer allowed to do pop up a donation request? If every extension and plugin developer did that, we would all stop using firefox.