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Patch Maker -- Mozilla Hacking & Patching Made

Posted by Hemos on from the tweaking-it-out dept.

A reader writes: " Mozillaquest.com has an article about Patch Maker which is a new Perl script that let's you hack the Mozilla UI using JS, CSS, and XUL. You do not have to download or compile the source code or pull CVS. It makes writing and submitting Mozilla UI patches easier."

7 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. WILL YOU SLASHDOT GUYS LEARN??? by Hitokage_Nishino · · Score: 5, Informative

    Stop posting stuff from mozillaquest.com!

    Even if the stuff about scripting is true, mozillaquest exists solely to bash the efforts of those who spend their time working on the mozilla project. Don't vindicate that troll who runs it.

  2. I wrote this software by Gerv · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am the author of Patch Maker. Any questions about it may be directed to me :-)

    Gerv

  3. Re:Just Incase some Slashdotting Occurs... by Gerv · · Score: 5, Informative

    The impetus for creating Patch Maker seems to lie in the fact that Mozilla bugs are raging out of control.

    In fact, the impetus for creating Patch Maker was to allow more people to contribute to Mozilla. Many UI designers are not able to manage the intricacies of our build process; many people do not want to purchase Code Warrior (on Mac) or MSVC++ 6 (on Windows) and are unable, for one reason or another, to install Linux. Many people do not have the bandwidth to continually download and update the CVS tree - even downloading a nightly is a major event which must happen at cheap telephone times.

    This software is for all of these people. For the first time, you can make a significant code contribution to a large open source project without the complexities of compiling.

    Note: Patch Maker is still in development; I would appreciate help porting it to Mac especially, and debugging it on Windows.

    Gerv

    --
    gerv@mozilla.org, author of Patch Maker

  4. Cool. I found something accurate in a MQ article!! by asa · · Score: 2, Informative

    So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.

    He actually got something right! It's not just developers hoping to get more bug-fixing help though. The Mozilla QA and testing community can use help as well. Gerv (creator of the Patch Maker) is also the maintainer of the Bugzilla Helper which, like the patch maker, was created to make it easier for people to contribute to the Mozilla project. If you're interested in helping to make Mozilla better and you've got DTML skills then you can probably help clean up the Mozilla UI with Gerv's Patch Maker. If you're interested in helping but aren't interested in development there are plenty of other ways to get involved.

    --Asa

  5. Re:Could you explain the second paragraph below? by Gerv · · Score: 4, Informative

    Did you read any other comments? Take everything you read at MozillaQuest with a very large pinch of salt.

    XUL is an XML-based language - just like XHTML, SVG or any of the others. The sentence "A standard XML parser cannot interpret XUL." is either wrong or extremely misleading. No XML parsers can _interpret_ what they read, but an XML parser can parse XUL perfectly. Mozilla uses expat for this purpose.

    That is why you cannot display XUL as a Web page with Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.x, or other non-Mozilla-based browsers.

    "Displaying XML as a web page" makes no sense. What happens is that you apply a style sheet to some XML (whether XHTML or something else) to display it. If you gave XUL a style sheet, it would display according to that style sheet. Essentially, this is what Mozilla does when it renders its UI.

    Gerv

  6. Repost with working links (I hope) by asa · · Score: 3, Informative

    Darn, Slashdot doesn't like title attributes in links :( Repost with good links

    So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.

    He actually got something right! It's not just developers hoping to get more bug-fixing help though. The Mozilla QA and testing community can use help as well. Gerv (creator of the Patch Maker) is also the maintainer of the Bugzilla Helper which, like the patch maker, was created to make it easier for people to contribute to the Mozilla project. If you're interested in helping to make Mozilla better and you've got DTML skills then you can probably help clean up the Mozilla UI with Gerv's Patch Maker. If you're interested in helping but aren't interested in development there are plenty of other ways to get involved.

    --Asa

  7. Rather than reading about it from a dubious source by moof1138 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Take a look at the docs at Mozilla's site:

    http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/patch-maker/

    I have to say that with the Tab interface, support for the LINKS toolbar, and all of the other cool things Moz has been picking up lately, it is really becoming a brilliant application. I cringe when I am stuck using I.E. now.

    --

    Hyperbole is the worst thing ever.