This is a huge new release, and I strongly recommend you follow some basic safety precautions before you do the upgrade.

As with most major version upgrades (1.0 - 1.5 - 2.0 -3.0) it's always safest to create a new profile, especially in this case, because not all extensions even work in Firefox 3.0 yet, and there may be conflicts created that make firefox unstablized.

Step 1: Get Organized
First you need to do a bit of research, and make sure your favorite extensions are supporting firefox 3. Not all, or some are, but not the versions on Mozilla.com.

I'll put a list here of my extensions, with links to the newest versions if required.

addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

I suggest you download and save all of them, don't install them for now, because the safest way to upgrade is to create a new profile, with new extensions, then transfer some key files.

First, update all the extensions you have to make sure you have the latest current. Open 'addons' in the tools menu, and it has an 'updates' option.

Pick it, then select install updates.

• Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5 : Firefox: 1.5 – 3.0.* : YES
  
• All-in-One Gestures 0.19.1 Firefox: 1.0 – 3.0.* : YES
  
• FxIF 0.2.3 Although claims support for 0.10 – 3.1a1pre, reports are that does not work in 3: Seems to work.
  
• PageRank Status 0.9.9 replaces google page rank status: remove old version before upgrade to ff 3, then reinstall.
  
• Live HTTP Headers 0.14 yes: all versions.
  
• Sort Bookmarks: 0.7.0 Scroll down home page until you see the version for 1.4 to 3.0, it's called 'Sort_Bookmarks_0.7.0-REP3.xpi', other sites say supports 3.0.
  
• Tab Mix Plus 0.3.6.1: must use developers version, not official one.
  
• User Agent Switcher 0.6.11 Yes, 3.0 support.
  
• View Source Chart 2.5.03: no, only 2.0, very unfortunate, oh well, we have to wait.
  
• View Source Choice 0.4 Yes.
  
• Web Developer 1.1.6: yes, chris pederick keeps up his great work.
  

Get Started
Now that you have saved your extensions, and know which ones will work, and have them ready and downloaded for install, you can continue.

Remember, you should use a new profile, which is a pain, because you have to import your bookmarks, cookies, form field data, and so on, and ff 3 uses different syntax.

Most important, before you update to 3, turn off all running instances of firefox.

After you update to 3, restart firefox with the -profilemanager flag.

This will let you create a new profile for your 3.0 install. We'll drag over and recreate your other files and data after that has worked, as well as reinstalling any extensions you want.

Then read this mozillazine update firefox 2 to 3.

Remember, if you are goiing to use the same profile, disable and remove the extensions that are unsupported in 3 BEFORE you start. And read this one too, about failed bookmark import, to avoid errors.

Backup your old profile just in case
I strongly urge you to save your entire profile directory somewhere else in case something goes wrong, that way you can at least install firefox 2 manually and reuse the profile, at worst.

Your profile, in Linux type systems, is usually here: /home/usrname/.mozilla/firefox/walkffs.default or something like that. Or where you put it if you made it explicitly.
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