The concept of using the plugins and the extensions goes by the fact that how frequently they are used. There can be two reasons when you can disable the use of a particular extension, especially when the plugin is not used at all or used very less and secondly when its use causes security issues. Security and stability should always be kept in mind. The Flash is a very frequently used plugin but, some users enable it only when required. This is very safe on their part. There might be a huge surprise for all those users who had upgraded to Firefox 21, the plugins and the extensions which were present in the older version were no longer there to be used. This might not affect many people who are not concerned with the extensions which have been removed, but others might be concerned as some websites might not work properly if some extensions have been removed.
The metro style version of the Firefox which usually works for windows 8 implemented the necessity which split the platform and the app resources so that there loading could be made separately ad effectively. There are certain folder locations that have been changed in Firefox 21. These are:
- defaults/preferences -> browser/defaults/preferences
- defaults/profile -> browser/defaults/profile
- extensions -> browser/extensions
- plugins -> browser/plugins
- searchplugins -> browser/searchplugins
- override.ini -> browser/override.ini
The extensions are usually stored in the Firefox extension directory and not in the Program folder so there is no major concern for many people. If there are certain extensions which might be missing, check for them in the program folder and when you access them, simply move them from the root extensions folder to browser/extensions. The same story goes for the plugins also. It there are certain plugins that are missing from the Firefox, then check them in the program folder a simply move them to the browser/plugins folder. There is also a new feature or parameter that has been integrated in to the Firefox which on enabling, checks for all the plugins in the root Firefox directory. This can be done by simply following these steps:
Step 1: Type about:config in the address bar and then press enter.
Step 2: Make a confirmation that you will remain careful if is the first time you go to open the page.
Step 3: Search for plugins.load_appdir_plugins and then double-click the entry.
If the value is shown true, then the root folder gets scanned, while if the value shown is false then the root folder does not get scanned. It is always preferable to move the plugins to the new folder. The Bugzilla provides additional information on why the platform and the apps had to be split.