How to install Googlebar for Firefox 20 and beyond

Rather than editing an XML file, I recommend installing Nightly Tester Tools. Nightly Tester Tools helps to make googlebar compatible, almost without a hitch. A while back, upgrading to Firefox version 11 worked for a little bit, but after a browser crash, googlebar disappeared, so I had to use the instructions below. So far I have had no problems with Firefox 20.

This blog post was originally published in June 2011, in response to the release of Firefox 5, then deleted and reposted in August 2011 to account for Firefox 6, and is now updated to account for the upgrade to Firefox 20.

Within the span of April of 2011 to the present, Firefox went from version 3.5 to versions 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and now 20. This has wreaked havoc on those of us who use the Firefox add-on Googlebar, one of the best interfaces on Firefox to Google, "with an emphasis on easy access to many types of specialized searches". The problem is, the maintainers, John Woods, Andy Boughton, and Francis Turner, don't seem to stay on top of the version changes; while the add-on is a very useful tool, the maintainers don't seem to be very useful when it comes to applying an incredibly simple fix, so that Googlebar can be installed on Firefox version 20 and beyond. We will now correct their oversight:

1. Right-click on the following link and "Save Link As..." to download Googlebar 0.9.20.05 locally to your computer:
   https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/latest/33/addon-33-latest.xpi?src=addondetail
   If you simply click on the link, your browser will try to install it, and the attempt may fail.
2. What you downloaded has a file extension of xpi, Cross Platform Install, which is basically a package of files that has been compressed. What we want to do now is decompress the xpi, in order to access a file inside named install.rdf. Since xpi is a compressed file, you can easily decompress it, using your operating system's default decompressor, by changing the file extension from .xpi to .zip. Then you click on the renamed file to display its contents, and open install.rdf with a text editor.
3. Scroll down the file, and look for the section for Firefox:

   <!-- Firefox -->
   <em:targetApplication>
    <Description>
     <em:id>{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}</em:id>
     <em:minVersion>2.0</em:minVersion>
     <em:maxVersion>5.*</em:maxVersion>
    </Description>
   </em:targetApplication>

   In the line that says maxVersion:
   

   <em:maxVersion>5.*</em:maxVersion>

   replace 5.* with the latest version of Firefox, which, as of today, is 20.*
   
4. Save the install.rdf file, and add it back to the zip file.
5. Rename the file extension, from zip, back to xpi.
6. In your browser, click Firefox, Add-ons, Gear button, "Install Add-on From File..." and install the xpi file that you just modified.

Editor's note: my friend David McIntyre, in the blog comment below, suggests, rather than editing an XML file, to install Nightly Tester Tools, which I shall now do, and will report back if there are any problems.

Update: I still recommend Nightly Tester Tools, but there was a problem for me when upgrading to Firefox 11, where I found, initially there was googlebar, but after a browser crash, it disappeared, and I had to follow the instructions above. I have had no problems with Firefox 20.