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 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

  • By
    Introducing MooTools Templated

    One major problem with creating UI components with the MooTools JavaScript framework is that there isn't a great way of allowing customization of template and ease of node creation. As of today, there are two ways of creating: new Element Madness The first way to create UI-driven...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    CSS Custom Cursors

    Remember the Web 1.0 days where you had to customize your site in every way possible?  You abused the scrollbars in Internet Explorer, of course, but the most popular external service I can remember was CometCursor.  CometCursor let you create and use loads of custom cursors for...

  • By
    9 Incredible CodePen Demos

    CodePen is a treasure trove of incredible demos harnessing the power of client side languages.   The client side is always limited by what browsers provide us but the creativity and cleverness of developers always pushes the boundaries of what we think the front end can do.  Thanks to CSS...

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!