Creating a Firefox Extension

Location

1-150, January 11, 18 — 4-6pm

Contact Info

sipb-iap-firefox at mit dot edu

Sample Code

• Browse through the extension source code
• Download the source
• Download the extension (download locally, then drag onto Firefox to install -- MIT's servers don't send the file with the application/x-xpinstall MIME-type, which prevents the usual install process from working)

Here's a user.js with developer preferences set in it, for disabling various caches and enabling forms of error logging: sample-user.js

Useful Links

• Extension structure
  • install.rdf format
  • chrome.manifest format
  • Valid Firefox version numbers
• Developer tips
  • Setting up a development environment
  • Miscellaneous tips
• XUL
  • The original XUL Tutorial, probably the best introduction to XUL out there
  • The XUL box model
• XPCOM
  • The Gecko SDK
  • XULPlanet XPCOM interface list (note: even tho it says Firefox 1.5, it still applies to 2.0)
• JavaScript
  • JavaScript reference (for looking up how a particular method works, or finding the one you want)
• XPCOM Interfaces
  • nsIPrefBranch
  • nsIPrefBranch2
  • nsISupports
  • nsIStreamListener
  • nsIRequestObserver
  • nsIObserver
  • nsIObserverService
• Help!
  • #extdev, the extension developer IRC channel
  • Mozilla Developer Center: Extensions
  • Mozilla newsgroups (see the dev hierarchy, in particular, especially mozilla.dev.extensions)
  • The Mozilla source