Developing Firefox Extensions with GNU/Linux

QT writes "Ars Technica has a lengthy but useful introduction to developing Firefox extensions with GNU/Linux. This guide comes hot on the heels of the RC for Beta 1 of Firefox. The article is a little more thorough than necessary, but I can't complain about anything that spurs Firefox development." From the article: "What can you do with a Firefox Extension? Firefox extensions can modify the Firefox user interface. This includes adding buttons to tool bars and menus; changing fonts, colors, and icons; capturing events in the client interface like page loads and clicks; and modifying web pages after the browser loads them and before the user sees them. All of this functionality comes with the aspect-oriented facility of overlays. Extensions also have as much access to the file system as the user running Firefox. Extensions can add protocol handlers, hooking actions to URLs like icq://, aim://, or stantz://. Extensions have UniversalXPConnect privileges, allowing them to harness any XPCOM component. Firefox comes with a rich library of XPCOM components that permit your extension to drive very low-level functionality like sockets from Javascript. You can also augment the XPCOM library with Firefox extensions by adding Javascript, linkable libraries, or XPIDL."

Comments

Slashdot "Editors"

[b0lt]

"Hot the heals"?

WTF? Aren't the editors supposed to edit the stories?

Request for Firebird developers

[frovingslosh]

For any Firebird developers (the e-mail co-product to Fixfox), one extension I would really like is the ability to click on one or a group of e-mail and send back to the sender (or whatever e-mail address the lying spammer has used for the reply address) a official looking "bounce" that the account does not exist. Wouldn't mind if it forwards the e-mail to abuse@ftc.gov in the same click, and reports it anywhere else that might be helpful too, but convincing the sender that the e-mail address is not really valid seems like the only effective way to reduce spam.