IceDragon & where Native Applications are stored

I’ve been using a FireFox add-on for years, called, Video Download Helper. After the recent IceDragon upgrade to 57.0.4, this add-on stopped working & always sends me to a page telling me I need to install their ‘companion app’ before the add-on will work. Multiple attempts to install this have been successfully performed, but the add-on, when invoked from IceDragon, continually fails, claiming the companion app still needs to be installed. Their explanation is that it is targeted to FireFox & Chrome & doesn’t specifically address IceDragon or any other compatibles. However, they tell me that if they can find out how IceDragon expects Native Applications to be arranged, where IceDragon expects the files to be, they will see about adjusting their install to make it work.

Do you have documentation you can point to or provide to Mig at Video Download Helper, so we can have this great app back in IceDragon?

This is from the developer:
“If you (or IceDragon developers or any knowledgeable user) can point to the IceDragon documentation regarding native applications (in particular: is it allowed and where is IceDragon expecting to find native apps manifests), then the “fix” might be in the next VDH release.”

IceDragon is basically a re-skinned Firefox. It shouldn’t handle it any differently. I don’t know much them or how the developer is setting this up but if it’s in anyway calling Firefox by name than it would, in theory, just need to be changed to IceDragon (ie. a registry entry going to “…Mozilla\Firefox…” would need to be changed to “…Mozilla\IceDragon…” while the program directory would be “C:\Program Files (x86)\Comodo\IceDragon”).
The profile directory would also be in the same spot, just references to Mozilla changed to Comodo and references to Firefox changed to IceDragon.

Hi Duir Thank you for reporting this issue.

After some investigation the location in the Windows registries for native messaging hosts is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ComodoGroup\NativeMessagingHosts

For example if you did a default installation of the download helper companion app the reg script to create the key would be:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ComodoGroup\NativeMessagingHosts\net.downloadhelper.coapp]
@="C:\\Program Files\\net.downloadhelper.coapp\\firefox.net.downloadhelper.coapp.json" 
 

We will probably change the key name for the next release to use the already existing IceDragon registry location and the patch noted will include that if we do it.

Enjoy,
The Comodo Browser Team.

Thanks, folks. That appears to be the solution. I’m passing this on to the VDH folks.