I use Zotero, a “free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research” (from their website). Zotero is based on Firefox and users can install addons from XPI files. I looking to install a DOM-Inspector to Zotero and I subsequently found zotero-inspector on Github. Upon going to the releases page, I clicked on the xpi file only to see an alert pop up in Firefox:

Upon going to the releases page, I clicked on the xpi file only to see an alert pop up in Firefox:

“The add-on downloaded from this site could not be installed because it appears to be corrupt.”

I… don’t know if this should be allowed. It just feels wrong.

  • A Basil PlantOP
    2•10 months ago

    Ah, maybe the whole context wasn’t added here, but I tried to download an XPI file for a different program that uses Firefox under the hood (called Zotero). I wanted to download the file to install it manually for the other program.

    Firefox naturally thought that the XPI file was meant for itself and tried to install it. The XPI file was never intended for Firefox.

    Edited to add: probably a pretty obscure thing that I noticed, but it’s still bizarre.