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I am in a corporate network and wanted to install some developer tools for Firefox. Unfortunately policies forbid that Firefox can access the internet directly, but there are other browsers available to go there. Now: how can I download an xpi-file directly without Firefox?

The problem when I access the addons-page for Firefox: the Download-Button is replaced with something similar to "only available in Firefox - download Firefox". Unfortunately I don't have other developer tools available yet, so I can not even inspect the site and look whether an actual link is available. But maybe there is some pattern, how the link could be derived? Or another site where the add-ons are listed?

Roland
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  • OK... an easy workaround: just use Firefox on any other device and copy/paste the link from there. In my case even the Firefox mobile version was able to qualify for that. But I still wonder, if there is some other qualified easy way ;-) – Roland Apr 17 '19 at 08:32
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    +1, this is just bad website design. Most sites that autodetect your platform at least offer some "all versions/other platforms" links offering direct downloads. – the8472 Apr 19 '19 at 18:05

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I found two (and a half) ways overcoming that problem for now. One is simply using another device, that has firefox on it and copy the link from there (as also stated in the comment).

Another variant was to look in the source code of the add-on-page. Hidden within some json-data is the actual download-url, e.g.:

"url":"https:\u002F\u002Faddons.mozilla.org\u002Ffirefox\u002Fdownloads\u002Ffile\u002F<plugin- or download-id>\u002F<plugin-file-name>.xpi?src="

After transforming that url back (basically only replacing the \u002F to / (and any other special symbol)), I could download the xpi without problem.

I also found a page where you could copy&paste the add-on-page into it and it started a plugin download. However I do not know anything about that site otherwise (so use at your own risk). It's name was "XPI Downloader". A pity it doesn't just list the actual url to the add-on itself :-/

Roland
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