GiPSy is a Firefox add-on to manage paragliding tracks.
Ondrap, the author, not always  find the time to keep it up to date with the new release pace of Firefox, and this often results in people being unable to use the add-on on the latest version of the browser.
This guide is intended to help people who want to use GiPSy on their PC by making a standalone local install of an old version of Firefox.

You can check what version is supported by the latest release of GiPSy at the bottom of this page, and then find the relative version of Firefox that suits better your language and operating system by browsing files here.

On Windows systems:

  1. download your selected Firefox for Windows system from here
  2. run the installer, at step 2 choose “Custom install” and hit “Next”
  3. create a “GipsyFox” folder on your desktop and select it as install location, hit “Next”
  4. uncheck all three options for shortcut icons and hit “Next”
  5. uncheck “use Firefox as my default browser”, hit “Install”
  6. after the installation process has finished, uncheck “Launch Firefox now” and hit “Finish”
  7. open the “GipsyFox” folder and create in it a file named “firefox.bat”, open it with notepad and put in it the following line:
    start firefox.exe -no-remote -profile Gipsy/
    if you don’t know how to do this (or if you’re too lazy), download the file from here and put it into the folder
  8. doubleclick the .bat file to launch Firefox and go straight to “Tools -> Options”, select “Advanced” section and “Updates” tab, uncheck “Firefox”, so it won’t update to newer versions incompatible with GiPSy
  9. install GiPSy from add-ons manager, restart Firefox as required
  10. create a shortcut to firefox.bat file on the desktop, rename it as “GipsyFox” or whatever you like, feel free to set a custom icon

On Mac systems:

On Macs, things are usually easy if you stay along the rails, but if you need to do something different from the usual it can become a real mess!
Let’s start:

  1. download your selected verion of Firefox for Mac from here
  2. doubleclick the file, but instead of dragging the Firefox icon on the Apps folder, drag it on your desktop and rename it as Firefox6
  3. now drag the Firefox6 icon in you Apps folder
  4. find “AppleScript Editor” on your system and using it create a script with the following:
    do shell script "/Applications/Firefox6.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -Profile /Applications/Firefox6.app/GiPSy/ &> /dev/null &"save it as “GiPSyFox” in the Applications folder, in the document format field select “Application” and don’t mess with other options.

    (many thanks to Asa for this guide)
    Ok, ok, lazy Mac user! Download the whole script from here and extract it in Applications, as a bonus you get also a nice icon 😉
  5. double click the GiPSyFox script, it will open Firefox 6. First thing to do is to go to “Firefox->Preferences”, select “Advanced” section, “Update” tab and uncheck “Firefox”, to prevent automatic updating.
  6. Install GiPSy from add-ons manager and restart Firefox as required

On Linux systems:

As a Linux user, you’re supposed to be able to deal with this kind of stuff by yourself, but since we are here, let’s do it together:

  1. download your selected version of Firefox for Linux from here
  2. extract the content of the file somewhere in your home folder
  3. Download the script gipsyfox from here and put it inside the extracted folder, make it executable.
  4. Still inside the extracted folder, create a subfolder named GiPSy (mind the case, otherwise it won’t work)
  5. Run the local install of Firefox by executing the gipsyfox script
  6. Once Firefox opens, go straight to “Edit -> Preferences”, select “Advanced” section and “Updates” tab and disable update check, so it won’t update to newer versions incompatible with GiPSy
  7. install GiPSy from add-ons manager, restart Firefox as required:
  8. For your convenience you can create a menu shortcut for your Desktop Environment with your favorite menu editor (e.g. under GNOME you can use Alacarte), just be sure to point it to the gipsyfox script.

You’re done, now you have a standalone version of Firefox that won’t upgrade itself to higher versions; you can customize it as you like with any kind of add-on, set XContest as homepage… as long as you run it from the right launcher, it won’t interfere with the other “official” install you use for daily web browsing. You can even run both at the same time!
Just remember that the standalone install, being an old release, lacks a lot of bug fixes, so don’t use it to access your home banking account, don’t type in it your credit card number and so on; use it just for GiPSy 😉