Un-XPI for Mozilla

As Mozilla continues its evolution from browser to platform, more interesting side projects are popping up daily. They range from small-but-useful browser add-ons like
MozBlog to complete new desktop environments like OEone’s HomeBase via fascinating saucer-crash spin-offs like XP Server. (Oh, and this is probably a good place to mention Phoenix for the Mac, which is a good thing because it means there’s now a XUL runtime for OS X which isn’t dog slow.)

So off we go, we proud, evangelical Mozillians, to run around mozdev.org, slurping up XPI files as fast as our connections will carry them. But when half of them turn out to be unstable shite that reduce our browser to a mess of buggy widgets, what then? We search in vain for some kind of uninstaller, but there isn’t one. Most of the projects don’t even have proper Preferences panels, let alone a (usually unconnected) “Uninstall” button. Unless we decide to brave the horrific mess of subdirectories and cryptic XML and Javascript files to find the right wires to cut, the only resort is a full wipe and reinstall. Ouch.

For some reason, the current version of the XPI API, despite tons of useful functions, has absolutely nothing for undoing those functions. Apparently early versions of Mozilla had some kind of package uninstaller but it never worked properly.

This was going to be an entry bemoaning the lack of an uninstaller framework, but it turns out that help is on the way: see this Bugzilla bug proposing a nice ‘n’ easy uninstaller panel in the Preferences. Of course, all the Mozdev projects will have to rewrite their installers to work with it, but they’re already doing that for Phoenix and every other new browser that comes along anyway…