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Installing the FindFirst Extension on Firefox

Firefox requires a signed extension for permanent installation, but for development and personal use you can load it temporarily or use Firefox Developer Edition / Nightly, which accept unsigned extensions.

1. Build the extension

From the repo root:

make build-firefox

The built extension will be at dist/firefox/.

Option A — Temporary installation (any Firefox, resets on restart)

  1. Navigate to about:debugging in your address bar.
  2. Click This Firefox in the left sidebar.
  3. Click Load Temporary Add-on…
  4. Open dist/firefox/ and select manifest.json.

The extension stays loaded until Firefox restarts. Re-load it after each restart by repeating steps 3–4, or after each build by clicking Reload on the FindFirst entry.

Option B — Persistent installation (Firefox Developer Edition or Nightly)

Firefox Developer Edition and Firefox Nightly allow unsigned extensions to be installed persistently.

  1. Download Firefox Developer Edition or Firefox Nightly.
  2. Navigate to about:config and set xpinstall.signatures.required to false.
  3. Package the extension: 
    make package-firefox
  4. Navigate to about:addons, click the gear icon, and choose Install Add-on From File…
  5. Select the .zip from the web-ext-artifacts/ directory.

Option C — web-ext (recommended for active development)

web-ext is included as a dev dependency and launches Firefox with the extension pre-loaded and live-reloading.

# In one terminal — rebuild on every file change
make dev-firefox

# In another terminal — launch Firefox with the extension
make run-firefox

Firefox will open automatically. The extension reloads whenever dist/firefox/ changes.

To lint the extension before packaging:

make lint-firefox

To produce a distributable .zip (output goes to web-ext-artifacts/):

make package-firefox

Configure the extension

Click the FindFirst icon in the toolbar and open Options to set your FindFirst server URL and credentials.

Removing the extension

  • Temporary install: navigate to about:debugging → This Firefox and click Remove next to FindFirst.
  • Persistent install: navigate to about:addons and click Remove next to FindFirst.