Firefox, I’ve loved you well since since the day we first met back in 2003.  I’ve been a loyal lover, too, and content to overlook your minor flaws. I’ve proclaimed your praises far and wide.  So, why oh why do you insist on trying so hard to improve yourself?  Your frequent upgrades are driving me mad!!!

[CAUTION:  This post is a rant! There is eventually helpful advice here, but I have some frustration to get off my chest first.]

Firefox is my preferred browser because I believe it to be the browser that offers more to make the Internet accessible to all users than any other browser.  This is the result of numerous built-in features and addons–especially addons.  I’ve written about some of these addons in numerous posts, as you’ll see if you type Firefox into the search bar at the top of this page.  There’s no disputing that I’m really a very big Firefox fan.

At the moment, I’m a frustrated Firefox fan!  That’s because Firefox has updated to a new version–AGAIN!  This means that some of the addons that I most appreciate won’t work with the latest version.  That, in turn, is because the good people who develop the addons, often out of the kindness of their hearts, have to spend time updating their addons to make them compatible with the updated Firefox.  This is a process that has been repeated too many times for me to keep track of.

At the moment, three of my favorite addons won’t work with the latest version–CLiCk,Speak, HyperWords, and the IE Tab.  This is particularly annoying to me because one of “my” school districts is finally willing to begin making Firefox available to learners.

The good news is that the incompatibility situation is only temporary.  In time, the addons will almost certainly be updated and made compatible.  There’s also a temporary solution to tide us over.  We do not need to install the latest version of Firefox.

If we’ve installed the latest version of Firefox and our addons won’t work, we can uninstall it.  (We won’t lose our bookmarks or other personalized data.)  Then we can go to Oldapps.com to download a previous version of Firefox and install that.

There!  Now that I’ve got all that off my chest, I feel much better.