Adding the XPI MIME Type for Firefox Extension Installs

By  on  

Yesterday I posted version 0.1 of the David Walsh Blog Toolbar for Firefox. Unfortunately that led to an awkward conversation with my .htaccess file.

.htaccess: I have no idea what to do with this.
me: I want the toolbar to install when they request this file.
.htaccess: Well, how am I supposed to do that?
me: OMG! You don't know?!
.htaccess: No, just like you didn't know how to create a Firefox extension before you did the research.
me: Good point. When can you research and start serving it up?
.htaccess: I can't research. I'm a file.
me: Oh. So I just need to figure things out for you again?
.htaccess: You never pay attention to me anymore...

That went on for quite a while but the moral of the story is that if you want your server to handle XPI files correctly, you need to add the following to your .htaccess file:

AddType application/x-xpinstall .xpi

If you don't add the above directive, Firefox will open the file as plain text which is an ugly mess.

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS @supports

    Feature detection via JavaScript is a client side best practice and for all the right reasons, but unfortunately that same functionality hasn't been available within CSS.  What we end up doing is repeating the same properties multiple times with each browser prefix.  Yuck.  Another thing we...

  • By
    Create a Sheen Logo Effect with CSS

    I was inspired when I first saw Addy Osmani's original ShineTime blog post.  The hover sheen effect is simple but awesome.  When I started my blog redesign, I really wanted to use a sheen effect with my logo.  Using two HTML elements and...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Image Data URIs with PHP

    If you troll page markup like me, you've no doubt seen the use of data URI's within image src attributes. Instead of providing a traditional address to the image, the image file data is base64-encoded and stuffed within the src attribute. Doing so saves...

  • By
    Jack Rugile’s Favorite CodePen Demos

    CodePen is an amazing source of inspiration for code and design. I am blown away every day by the demos users create. As you'll see below, I have an affinity toward things that move. It was difficult to narrow down my favorites, but here they are!

Discussion

  1. Only a web dev could have some kind of decent conversation with a file!

    I did wonder why it didn’t install when I clicked it, good to see you found out why though. The ever brilliant David saves the day!

  2. Awesome :)

    Is it just me or are .htaccess files getting increasingly uppity lately?

  3. You’re hilarious, dude! Have fun in Cali!!

  4. Facundo

    LOL! i used to have long talks whit .htaccess too.

  5. I envy your relationship with your .htaccess file.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!