I’ve solved some problems the « not necessarily best method » way. Normally, when you uninstall an extension, only the .rdf’s pointing to the directory are removed, but the extension still exists. Sometimes items don’t uninstall or disable at all. When that happens, the only way to clean up a profile is:

1. make a zip backup of your entire profile in case the next steps really hose it up. I zip up my program directory too. You have to do this while the browser is shut down or you will get zip errors on files in use.
2. use file-explorer to go to the top of the profile tree, and search for « extension name » in the text search entryfield. This should display any .rdf files pointing to the extension.
3. edit those files and remove the instances of the extension name CLEANLY… get the .... or so you dont make xml errors.
4. remove the jar directory.
5. restart FF.

This doesn’t work for the Tinderbox status icon. I have to leave the directory, else FF never displays. It would be nicer if the extension directories were not the classId, so it is easier to find particular extension dirs. Clav names his with a simply « cards », or « goup » and they are easy to locate.

This is not a tutorial on writing Firefox extensions because there are already good ones out there on the web (see below). Here I give references to full tutorials, and then provide my own tips about tools and publishing that are not covered in the tutorials.

(Googlized)