British English Dictionary not compatible !

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
mozillagodzilla
Posts: 1
Joined: March 23rd, 2007, 4:48 am

British English Dictionary not compatible !

Post by mozillagodzilla »

Having upgraded to the new recommended Mozilla version and its addons, I'm now getting this message:

"British English Dictionary 1.19 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Firefox 2.0.0.3. (British English Dictionary 1.19 will only work with Firefox versions 2.0b1 to 1.0b2)"

How do I turn Mozilla back to the previous version?

Thanks :-)
User avatar
Tony-E
Posts: 8778
Joined: November 5th, 2004, 11:28 am

Post by Tony-E »

The dictionary is compatible and you can install it on Firefox 2.0.0.3, there is just an error in the setup file for the extension.

A couple of methods that you can use to add the dictionary are:
Download the extension, right-click on https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo ... +zm+tb.xpi and choose "Save Link As"
This will save the file to your hard drive, default name british_english_dictionary-1.19-fx+zm+tb.xpi

Use the methods shown at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Updating_extensions
In the article it mentions looking for a line that contains maxVersion in the file called install.rdf - In this case it occurs 3 times, you need to change the first occurrence, change 2.0b2 to 2.0.0.*
To make the extension compatible with Thunderbird 2 locate the 2nd instance of maxVersion and change 2.0b1 to 2.0.0.*
The 3rd instance of maxVersion relates to SeaMonkey, in that case you can change 1.1a to 1.1.* in order to install it in the latest version.

Another method is to manually add the dictionary.
Open the .xpi file with your file archiver (I use 7-Zip). Open the dictionaries folder within the .xpi archive and extract 2 files, en-GB.aff and en-GB.dic
Copy these 2 files to the dictionaries folder of your Firefox/Thunderbird/SeaMonkey installation, for Windows the default location is:
Firefox 2
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\dictionaries\
Thunderbird 2
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\dictionaries\
SeaMonkey 1.1.*
C:\Program Files\SeaMonkey\dictionaries\


Edit: See later posts in this thread for links to updated versions that you should be able to install on Firefox 2.0.0.*
2nd edit - added details of how to make extension compatible for Thunderbird 2 and SeaMonkey.
Last edited by Tony-E on April 21st, 2007, 2:31 am, edited 4 times in total.
helios-uk
Posts: 3
Joined: March 26th, 2007, 1:34 am

Post by helios-uk »

Thanks Pedestrian - works great. I used your first method to fix this.

Cheers,

Richie
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

Worked for me too after a couple of tries, needed to change all maxversion to 'maxVersion>2.0.0.3'
GuestMacUser
Guest

Post by GuestMacUser »

Does anyone know how to get it to work on a MAC?

I tried altering the .rdf method and it appears to work as it allows you to install it - firefox say's "this addon will be installed when firefox is restarted" but you restart - it disappears - its not in the list of extensions.

Anyone help?
jim_topbloke
Posts: 1
Joined: March 28th, 2007, 1:42 pm

Post by jim_topbloke »

Yeah, Thanks, never noticed it was missing until 10 mins ago!

Just like to add that if you are using 7-zip the easiest way to do the edit is single click the install.rdf file & press F4, edit the line & remember to allow the update after you save it in notepad.
Another Mac User
Guest

No dice...

Post by Another Mac User »

Well I just tried the other method - renamed the .xpi to .zip, opened the contents and copied them to the mac location (Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/.../extensions/en-GB@dictionaries.addons.mozilla.org/dictionaries/) and restarted Firefox, but that didn't work either :(
Another Mac User
Guest

Sorted!

Post by Another Mac User »

Editing the install.rdf worked for me. I had a problem on the mac that if I renamed the .xpi to .zip and extracted the contents, when I modified the .rdf and re-zipped it I was no longer able to install the extension. I figure the zip compression on the mac has some variation to the original .xpi. So I had to open the .xpi in Windows through parallels so that I could replace the .rdf directly in the archive without extracting and recompressing. Bingo!
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

GuestMacUser wrote:Does anyone know how to get it to work on a MAC?
Download the extension Mr Tech Local Install.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/421

Among other things, it allows you to override the old-version restriction on extensions. As the poster Another Mac User discovered, unzipping an extension, editing it and rezipping it won't work with Macs.
TheWidget
Posts: 26
Joined: September 4th, 2003, 8:34 am

Post by TheWidget »

Although, I accept that it is possible to install the dictionary with a bit of tweaking (which isn't a problem for me), I'm not happy with the fact that this is a problem with the latest official release of Firefox and an official dictionary. Granted, British English is not as widely used as American English but there must be a fair number of British users (10s if not 100s of thousands) that this would affect. Most of which are expecting their browser to just work and if it doesn't will just assume that Firefox is just broken.

As you pointed out, the fix is trivial. How do we ensure that it is fixed officially?
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

TheWidget wrote:How do we ensure that it is fixed officially?
The problem: As far as I can ascertain,extensions (and their authors) have no more an official status with Mozilla than do you or I or the people running this board. Like them, the author of the British-dictionary extension works in a volunteer capacity. It is that author's decision whether to keep the extension current, not Mozilla's.
yoxi
Posts: 3
Joined: July 15th, 2004, 11:13 pm
Location: Cambridge, UK

Post by yoxi »

I have posted a version-tweaked version of the British English dictionary 1.1.9 called en_gb_dictionary-1.19_tweakedfor2.0.0.3.xpi.zip (MaxVersion set to 3.0) for anyone who wants to use it - works fine on my mac, for example, straight out of the box. Hope this is useful. You'll need to unzip it before using it - on a mac, it'll probably further unzip the .xpi into a folder as well, which you can delete after.

- yoxi
---------->
if it's brokenless, don't suffix it...
R0GUE
Posts: 12
Joined: February 26th, 2005, 11:02 am
Location: W.Sussex UK

Post by R0GUE »

Thanks yoxi, that works a treat! I appreciate your efforts.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

I suck at using computers and I haven't got a clue on how to go about any of what has been mentioned so far. I tried installing yoxi's program but it just tells me I don't have the right software to read the file. Could someone please help?
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

It's okay, I managed to work it out. I didn't realise that you had to open the file with Firefox.

**hides head in shame**
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