Installing incompatible add-ons in Firefox

After updating the Firefox you may notice that some of your add-ons are disabled by the Firefox. This is because the old add-ons are not compatible with the newer version of firebox. For reliability purpose the incompatible add-ons are disabled.
If you want them back you need to find the updated compatible version of add-on on https://addons.mozilla.org/. But it may happen that the compatible version of that add-on is not available on the site since the developer has to update the add-on for new version of Firefox.
But it is not the case that the old add-ons can't  work with new Firefox. Many of these add-on could work efficiently but the only problem is that they are build fo nearticular versions of Firefox and the newer versions of Firefox won't allow them to install.

But we can bypass this incompatibility issue using following steps.
1] Open Firefox. Go to address bar and type about:config and hit enter.
2] Firefox will open a list of values. Right Click anywhere on the list, Select New and click Boolean.
3] Enter "extensions.checkCompatibility.[Version]" in the Name field.
     Version: Type the version no of your Firefox. you can find it in Help > about Firefox.
4] Select FALSE value and click OK.
5] Restart Firefox.
6] Done. Now you can install incompatible add-ons in Firefox.

Using APKTool to Decompile and Recompile Android APKs

APKTool is an application which decompiles and recompiles android APKs.

It is very useful for decrypting the XML files inside the Android APK. After Decompilation we can edit the XML files and rebuild the APK. Since the strings used in the app are stored in the XML file (such as strings.XML) we can build a language pack  by translating the strings inside .XML file to any language we want.

This tool also allows us to debug the smali code.

Following is the step by step tutorial for using the APKtool on Windows.

1.Download the APKTool from http://code.google.com/p/android-apktool/.

2.Extract the downloaded APKtool to a directory (consider the dir name as apktoolwin).

3.Copy your apk file(consider the file name as xyz.apk) in the same directory.

4.Open command prompt and navigate to the APKTool directory (in our case apktoolwin).

5.Execute the following command
apktool d xyz.apk

Command prompt shows the following information
I: Baksmaling...
I: Loading resource table...
I: Decoding resources...
I: Loading resource table from file: C:\Users\sam\apktool\framework\1.apk
I: Copying assets and libs...

6.After successful completion you can find the directory with the same name as the apk file (in our case you will notice that xyz directory is been created in apktoolwin directory)

7.Now this xyz directory contains all the resources like images, xmls, etc which we can edit.

8.Use Notpad++ application for editing the xml files.

9.After editing the files we are ready to rebuild the apk. Use the following command to rebuild the apk

apktool b [folder name] [new file-name]

In our case

apktool b xyz  xyznew.apk

10.Done.You will find xyznew.apk is created in the apktoolwin directory.

Installing .sh files on Linux

What is .sh file ?
 .sh file is a Bash Shell Script. This file contains Bash language instructions. The .sh file can be executed in Linux(ubuntu,mint etc) and UNIX(Mac os x) machines.

Installing/Running .sh file
  Step by Step tutorial on installation of .sh file in Terminal.

1. Copy/Save the .sh file in desktop.

2. Open the Terminal from Menu->Accessories->Terminal.

3. In Terminal, type cd ~/Desktop. Now the default directory is Desktop.

4. Next, type sudo sh ./name_of_file.sh .

5. You will be asked to enter the password of root account . Type the password and hit Enter.

6. The Terminal will start the installation process.