Wed 17 Jan 2007
Facebook Toolbar Extension for Firefox Problems
Posted by Administrator under Technology[10] Comments
I run firefox in Linux, and I’ve noticed a problem with the facebook extension. It seems like, if firefox ever shuts down abnormally (from dying, or from X-windows dying, etc.) the facebook toolbar gets stuck in a semi-bad state. Normally, after you login to facebook, the question marks shown below (next to the pokes, friend requests, and messages icons) disappear, and the toolbar notes the name of the person logged in.
Once the toolbar gets confused, this transition doesn’t occur. The look of the toolbar stays in a ‘not logged in’ condition. The toolbar will continue to popup little windows when certain events occur, but it won’t tell you if you’ve been poked, have friend requests, or messages.
Some background information…
The firefox extension for facebook is a wonderful thing. Once you have installed it and logged in, it will tell you when you get poked, get friend requests, or get messages.
This is what the toolbar looks like before logging in. You can tweak the look of the toolbar so that it shows (or hides) certain things. Also, the toolbar will popup a brief window in the corner of the screen when someone changes their status, has new wall posts, etc. All in all, a useful extension.
After much trial and error, I discovered what I needed to do to fix the problem with the toolbar getting “stuck”.
- Shutdown firefox
- Go into your mozilla preferences directory. On linux, this is something like
~/.mozilla/firefox/default.3ra/(the last directory is likely to be named something different). - Edit the
localstore.rdffile. - Delete the RDF description for the facebook-toolbar. Search for and delete the following. It will be on 2 lines in the file, but I’ve broken it up here so that you can see it:
<rdf : Description RDF:about="chrome://browser/content/ browser.xul#facebook-toolbar" currentset="facebook-sidebar-toggle,separator,facebook-link-menu, separator,facebook-notification-poke,facebook-notification-reqs, facebook-notification-msgs,facebook-notification-separator, facebook-share,spring,facebook-login-info" />
Once you’ve deleted that section and saved the file, you should be able to restart firefox, log into the facebook toolbar, and be in good shape. Hope this helps someone out there!
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March 6th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I have the same problem. Editing the localstore.rdf as suggested didn’t work for me though
May 13th, 2007 at 3:21 am
No consolation to Mark, unfortunately, but this nifty little edit solved the problem for me perfectly. Had been searching on the web for a solution, and happened upon your page — thanks very much for posting this solution!
September 18th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
this did not work for mac.
October 1st, 2007 at 2:45 pm
This worked for me. Thanks a million!
Win XP SP2, Firefox 2.0.0.7
April 21st, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Works like a charm for Mac.
Step 2. location is ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/gibberish.default/
June 28th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Thank you so much for this! So frustrating whenever it happens. And thanks, Jag, for the Mac-specific location..I never would’ve found it on my own.
July 26th, 2008 at 2:53 am
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April 20th, 2009 at 8:54 am
That’s a fine solution!
Sadly, it only works for me the first time i restart firefox after the trick. When firefox is closed and opened again, it gets stuck in the “not-logged-in” state once more.. And seriously, there must be another way round than deleting the entry all the time..
Does anybody have more information?
July 14th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
I don’t have that problem, but when I’m signed into the toolbar I get ‘someone wrote on your wall’ messages in the corner every 5 minutes.
September 17th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
How do I do this on Windows Vista? I’m having the exact same problem, it won’t let me log in, and when I try to log in while already logged into regular Facebook, it logs me out, GEEZ!