Firefox setup

[marc]

Hi,

I keep tripping over problems with Firefox (v1.5.0.9) that are wearing 
me down. I'd like advice on the best setup for my needs. I'm using 
Dapper.

As I understand it, I need the firefox package installed, otherwise 
aptitude will remove ubuntu-desktop and others (I have ubuntu installed, 
as well as kubuntu). I'm happy to install Firefox in /opt, but I'll get 
to that.

However, I need to install extensions that are not packaged, and this 
often seems to result in the extension not working in Firefox.

For example, currently, I have the HTML Validator extension installed, 
but it does not work. Worse than that, every time I load FF, the 
extension instigates a page load informing  me that a "dynamic C library 
contained in the extension could not be found".

In addition, after I run "Update all extensions", it's common that some 
extension break. For example, I've just updated the "Web Developer" 
extension, and it now reports that "This feature requires the DOM 
Inspector to be installed" when attempting to use the View Style 
Information function. (The DOM Inspector is installed.)

Now, a while back I installed FF in /opt and adjusted alternatives, but 
I still ran into problems when updating due to permissions.

Clearly, this is way to much hard work for something that should "just 
work", so I'd like advice on the way to proceed. Thanks.

-- 
Cheers,
Marc