FootieFox 2.0 install hangs Firefox on OS X

I just experienced this and thought others may encounter the same issue, so here's how I went about fixing it.

As I was using Firefox yesterday a system alert appeared informing me that FootieFox 2.0 was ready to install. FootieFox is an extension to show realtime soccer scores in the Firefox status bar, and I've found it very useful, though a tad unstable. So an updated version was (note the past tense) very welcome. I elected to install it later which, it turned out, was today. And that's when the problems started...

I shut down my machine completely yesterday and, in so doing, tried to quit Firefox. But it hung on quit, and I had to 'Force Quit' it (I'm using OS X 10.5). (Unfortunately this isn't unusual. I've noticed that Firefox has been doing this a lot lately; I just haven't got around to diagnosing the problem. Some reports suggest it's got something to do with Parallels Desktop for Mac but I haven't confirmed that yet.) When I started Firefox this morning, I got the usual Start New Session/Restore Previous Session alert, and I elected the latter. It seemed to run fine...but no browser window appeared.

In the Window menu, "FootieFox Installation" was listed but there was no window. So I tried to quit Firefox and, wouldnt'chaknowit, that didn't work -- Firefox was still in the Activity Monitor's list of running processes. So I 'Force Quit' it again.

I started up Firefox again, this time selecting the "Start New Session" option, and was presented with FootieFox 2.0's installation window. I went through all the options (which include installation/enablement of some sort of toolbar, and generation of a unique serial number that, the developers claim, will help them manage server load and development of the extension. Hmm...), clicked Done, and Firefox started but, again, no browser window appeared. Another Force Quit later, I was back to where I started.

So I moved all the files associated with extensions out of ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles/<profilename> and put them on the Desktop. Those files are:

extensions <folder>
extensions.cache
extensions.ini
extensions.rdf

Then I started Firefox again and -- voila! -- it started up fine but missing all my usual extensions, as you'd expect. Figuring that the FootieFox update was the culprit, I quit Firefox (which didn't hang this time) and put all the above files back into their original locations, overwriting the ones that Firefox automatically generated upon last startup. I then looked in ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/profiles/<profilename>/extensions for any folders and files with today's date. I found two:

• A folder with a gibberish name
• A folder called staged-xpis

I moved them to the Desktop and started Firefox again. It worked fine, and all of my extensions are now back, except for FootieFox.

Right now the FootieFox 2.0 extension's download page isn't working. I haven't yet seen any discussion of whether there's a major problem with it or not, but it was definitely a complete pain to diagnose this and figure out what the heck was going on. I hope this little explanation of my situation helps others. If so, please comment below.

Comments

[Danny]

I have the same problem, any solution so far, to get it running???

[Dave]

Boris of FootieFox contacted me and pointed out that version 2.0.2 is now available. I did a clean install of that from this page and all is now very well. There are a few kinks to be worked out, such as weirdnesses in the en-US language pack (lots of German mistranslations...but that's okay; they're easy enough to figure out) and an odd problem with drop-down lists on OSX 10.5.1. Other than that, it's working like a charm.