I have firefox installed manually (no package system) in /usr/local/firefox.

I had 1.0.5 which was buggy to say the least. I downloaded the 1.0.6 installer and ran it as root inside of kde. It deleted the old /usr/local/firefox and then installed the new version.

After installing the new version, I opened firefox using my normal Linux user. All my extensions and themes appear to work, but I cannot access them. If I open the "Extensions" or "Themes" dialogs, they are blank (doesn't look like the list is even painting). Not event the default theme shows up.

I had the same problem going from 1.0.4 to 1.0.5. To fix that, I blew away my preferences in my home directory, then I went and reinstalled all the extensions 1 by 1 again. I really don't want to do that again.

Anyone know the problem or a work around?

In my /home/username/.mozilla/x8hbj9lp.default folder, there's another folder called "extensions." I would assume this is where the extensions live.

Do you have one like that?

If so, I'd back up that folder, export your bookmarks, then trash your .mozilla folder. Open up Firefox. Close it. Then put the extensions folder back and import your bookmarks.

If that doesn't work... well, extensions are typically what make Firefox unstable. That happened on my wife's Powerbook. Firefox kept crashing for certain sites, so we got rid of her profile folder and rebuilt Firefox, installing one extension at a time and putting in only the essential ones.

Sometimes, it's that extension developers do not upgrade their extensions. Sometimes extensions are not compatible with each other.

I tried what you said, and unfortunately it did not work. I ended up spending over an hour (I use a lot of extensions) reinstalling all my extensions on a new profile (deleted the .mozilla directory). I noticed that some things started to work after I ran firefox as root. So, for the next time, I will try to run the install, then open firefox as root, then try opening it as my user and see if it works.