Unsigned extensions?

Add-ons Add-on Support
#1

I’m working through the XUL School tutorials.

The first one has you download and install a helloworld addon.

However, I get an error message saying:

developer.mozilla.org
Firefox Developer Edition has prevented this site from installing an unverified add-on.

The dialog includes a link to this site about add-on signing.

Any suggestions? How can I proceed? Should I just uninstall FDE? Or will this problem happen with regular FF too?

1 Like
#2

Yeah that’s a good point, I think we’ll need to sign this addon for MDN. I’ll talk to some MDN guys who know about signing.

But on developer edition you should be able to use unsigned extensions, is it not letting you?

#3

I can confirm that latest Firefox Developer Edition isn’t allows installation of unsigned extensions:

41.0a2 (2015-08-05)

fx.png873×680 75.8 KB

Add-on installed with cfx is disabled too.
It is definitely a bug.

1 Like
#4

I’ve filed a bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1191260

2 Likes
#5

From bug comment:
Set “xpinstall.signatures.required” to false

#6

Thank you for letting us know, the link on that MDN page points now to a signed file.

#7

Thank you for addressing it so quickly!

I was able to download and install the XPI, but when I restart Firefox it doesn’t seem to be working (the menu item is not added). I’m using the Developer Edition, should I be using standard Firefox instead for these tutorials?

#8

I didn’t have a thorough look at the add-on but it might be not working in recent versions of Firefox. I currently don’t have time to fix it as I am busy reviewing productive add-ons for signing.

Maybe someone else could have a look?

#9

Im not a fan of overlay addons but ill take a look. I got a message from someone saying its possibly hijacked:

[quote=“nohamelin”]Hi,
Today I see this discussion:
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/unsigned-extensions/3004

I don’t have a Mozilla persona account (or whatever is the service name) and, between the participants in that thread, I recognized only your username so I’m comment you this via (sorry if it’s not ok): I checked the source of that addon and it never apply a overlay to the main menu; instead, it tries to play a bit with a network-monitor service:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/files/browse/146909/file/content/browserOverlay.js

I’m not sure what happened here… can you check it, or comment in that thread and to help with what happened?

Rewards.[/quote]

1 Like
#10

It’s not really malicious, but it does a bunch of things the original doesn’t, so I’m disabling it for now. We’ll need to figure out what to do about it, though, since it’s using the same ID as the original. This tutorial will probably be deprecated very soon anyway.

#11

Thanks man for looking into that. Yeah overlay is icky.
Super thanks to nohamlin for pm’ing/alerting about this, very keen of him!

Possibly first public positive sign of “Signed addons”? :stuck_out_tongue: As thats what made him notice, cool stuff.