What is Methuselah?
Methuselah is an update of an add-on named Methusalem, created by Oliver Martin for version 1 of Firefox. Designed to function much like IE View, users would right click on a page. The standard menu would appear with a series of options.

  • Wayback This Page
  • Wayback Link
  • Coralize This Page
  • Coralize Link

    • When users clicked on the Wayback links they were taken to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and its list of all copies of the page in question. The Coralize links called up an archived copy of the page from the Coral Content Distribution Network.

    At the time the add-on was released the add-on repository we are all familiar with was not as well organized as it is now. Methusalem was only available from the site Mr. Martin had created to house it. Some time ago the site and the add-on disappeared from the Internet. Apparently, so did Mr. Martin.

    The last version of his add-on still functions, but will rapidly become irrelevant due to the Internet Archive introducing a new Wayback Machine. So I set out to update his work for current versions of Firefox while still retaining compatibility with earlier versions. I believe I have succeeded.

    Changelog

  • 0.6.1: Some old code was deleted. Supports up to version 8.0a1.
  • 0.6: Fixed a bug where query parameters were being stripped from URLs when being passed to the Wayback Machine portion of Methuselah. Updated Wayback Machine URL.
  • 0.5.1: Minor bug fix to eliminate a loose variables problem that prevented the extension from passing full review in the Mozilla Add-ons Repository. Source files in the "content" directory which had been present since Methusalem 0.1 were deleted.
  • 0.5: Changed the name from Methusalem to Methuselah, to be more in keeping with the biblical personage.
  • 0.5: Changed the URL from the old wayback machine to the new one.

    • While the change of version number from 0.4 to 0.5 was merely cosmetic, the update to the new wayback machine URL was a lot more dramatic. The old wayback machine was slow and tended not to pull up results when the servers were loaded. Further, there was no data from 2008 onward, which cut out a lot of sites that were created in those years. The new wayback machine fixed both of these problems.

    Why start at version 0.5?
    Mr. Martin's numbering scheme was started at 0.1 and proceeded to 0.4 before he abandoned the project. Since all I've done is revive his project and gave it a paint job (the name change), I decided to keep his numbering scheme.

    Installation

  • Before installing, remove any versions of Methusalem that may be on the computer and restart Firefox.
  • Right click on the link below and select "Save As" to save the .xpi file to your computer's hard drive.
  • Drag the .xpi file into a Firefox window to install.
  • Restart Firefox and enjoy.

    • Updates
    Don't expect much. The only real update that may occur is if the Internet Archive changes the address to the wayback machine.

    Compatibility
    Methuselah is compatible with all versions of Firefox from 4.0 through 8.0a1, and should be compatible with future versions as well unless Firefox undergoes a radical redesign that breaks compatibility with all existing add-ons. If using a version of Firefox older than version 4.0, Version 0.5 can be downloaded below, which is backwards compatible with versions of Firefox dating back to 1.0.

    Install Methuselah 0.6.1

    The source files are available here. If version 0.5 of the add-on is needed for whatever reason, it can be installed here.

    Creative Commons License
    Methuselah by Steven E. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.