Upgrading Firefox 3.5b4 to something closer to 3.5 final

After using Firefox 3.0 for a while, I decided to try 3.1b3 hoping there would be some more performance improvements. It globally felt a bit better than 3.0, but then auto-update suggested that I install 3.5b4. I guessed it was the weirdly numbered following beta version, so I chose to install it. But it broke some really important things, most notably the session saving feature from Tab Mix Plus, and the function to re-open a recently (and most often, “accidentally”) closed tab (CTRL+SHIFT+T), which left me very annoyed and impaired. I didn’t want to take the risk to downgrade and potentially lose my profile data (not supposed to be backwards compatible as far as I know). So I had no choice but to move to a later nightly. Which led me to another problem: Mozilla’s Firefox nightly FTP folder looks like a mess to a newbie like me. Sorting it by date and time could have helped a bit, but I preferred to run a desperate search which let me find out that Firefox 3.5 is aka “Shiretoko” and aka branch 1.9.1. Hurray, here are branch 1.9.1 FTP folders:

• Not localized
• Localized

One last problem (with again the solution): most extensions don’t officially support 3.5. To bypass the highly annoying failed compatibility check, go to about:config and set extensions.checkCompatibility to false. You will still see the compatibility check process upon installing a new version, but the incompatible extensions won’t get deactivated.

PS: “for informational purpose only”, my list of enabled extensions as of today on Firefox 3.5 Shiretoko updated today 23 May 2009:
* Adblock Plus 1.0.2
* Add N Edit Cookies 0.2.1.3
* CacheViewer 0.5b4
* CustomizeGoogle 0.76
* Firebug 1.3.3
* Gmail Notifier 0.6.3.11
* Greasemonkey 0.8.20090123.1
* Java Console 6.0.11
* Java Quick Starter 1.0
* MIME Edit 0.60
* Modify Headers 0.6.6
* MR Tech Toolkit 6.0.3.3
* NoScript 1.9.2.8
* ReloadEvery 3.0.0
* Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7.3
* Tamper Data 10.1.0
* User Agent Switcher 0.6.11
* Web Developer 1.1.6
* worksafer 0.3
* Yes popups 0.9.8b
They all seem to work fine.