I find the MileWideBack add-on handy when using the mouse for web surfing: simply slam the cursor up against the left edge of the maximized window and use the scroll button to quickly navigate between open tabs.

As a surfer who often has several tabs open at once, this is indispensable.

Firefox 3 has just been launched: I’m not patient enough to wait for 3.0.1, so I’ve downloaded and installed it today. Most add-ons will be compatible in the next few days, however I didn’t want to wait for MileWideBack, as it hasn’t been updated for a long time.

So … my “quick fix” worked and I’m sharing it (I’m using Windows XP). Total time to fix: about 5 minutes (including waiting for a 3Mb download).

1. Download the official mozilla MileWideBack 0.2.9 xpi file and saved it to my desktop
2. Download the freeware PeaZip archive manager sourceforge project. Install and Run.
3. Within PeaZip’s interface, navigate to where you saved the xpi file
4. Extract all. Delete the extracted “chrome” and “defaults” folders, you don’t need them
5. Open install.rdf in a text editor like Notepad or UltraEdit
6. First, change the version to a new number — I used 0.2.9a:

   <em:version>0.2.9a</em:version>

7. Second, change the max Firefox version — I used 3.0.*:

   <em:maxVersion>3.0.*</em:maxVersion>

8. Save the file and drag-n-drop back into the xpi archive
9. In Firefox, open the new xpi file using File > Open File… — it will install as a normal add-on
10. Restart Firefox … MileWideBack is now working again!

It may have already been updated by the time you read this post: if not, I hope it helps!

These were also the steps I basically followed to “update” All-in-One Gestures to be FF3 compatible (I found this solution in the feedback for All-in-One Gestures).