How to handle different versions of a Firefox Addon in different Firefox versions

Question

I've programmed an addon for Firefox. In the "backend view" of the Firefox addon store I now see the message, that my addon is no longer compatible to Firefox starting from version 30.0 (see screenshot1).

A quick look into the new API told me what to change and so I did.

But how can I make shure, that useres with a Firefox 29.0 or older will still get the "old" version of the addon, and users surfing on Firefox 30.0 and newer get my updated addon?

Does the shop backend makes that choice? Because when uploading new addons I can set the supported versions of Firefox (see screenshot2).

And how to increase the addons id? Now it is set to 1.0.0. Should I go with 1.0.1 or should I leave some "space" for updates to the "old" version and start with 2.0.0?

I'm confused. Could anybody please help me? Thanks in advance!

Bye Niels

Answer 1

You can include separate code for different FF versions if you want Chrome registration - appversion

Here is an example from GreaseMonkey chrome.manifest:

overlay    chrome://browser/content/scratchpad.xul chrome://greasemonkey/content/scratchpad-overlay.xul appversion<23.0
overlay    chrome://browser/content/devtools/scratchpad.xul chrome://greasemonkey/content/scratchpad-overlay.xul appversion>=23.0

Answer 2

This is what an AMO developer answered via mail:

AMO should offer the right version depending on the browser version you're using. In the worst case, users can click on the All Versions link and see past versions that can be installed.

So I uploaded my updated extension and set the browser-compatibility to Firefox 30.0 and higher.

Answer 3

Sometimes these incompatibility notices are false alarms (this seems especially the case with version 30) and sometimes the resolve spontaneously because Mozilla runs batch tests or the like. If the compatibility issue is with (say) widgets vs. ActionButtons, there are ways to accommodate both levels of FF version support with try...catch structures.