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Greetings, all!
We hosted our first Hack Day a few weeks ago
at our
corporate office in Dayton, Ohio. The
purpose of this internal Hack Day was for
our staff to take time away from their
day-to-day activities and think about and
work on something new that will contribute
to the company, our customers and community
members. The Hack Day wasn't just for geeks
- we wanted to get everyone involved and
highly encouraged the staff to think outside
of their normal department. We also didn't
stress on getting working projects; it could
be just a presentation, a specification, a
demo or a mockup.
It worked pretty well for a first attempt
and we plan on making it an annual event. If
you have a working team, organizing a Hack
Day is something definitely worth it - you
will be impressed as to how many great ideas
can be generated as your team unlocks
creativity.
Regards,
Ahmad Permessur
Newsletter Editor
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A Guide to Firefox Extension
Development |
One of the reasons that
Firefox has gained a lot of traction
in the past few years is because of
its support for extensions which
lets users personalize their
browsing experience. With the Web
moving towards a 'Software as
Services' architecture, Web users
want the abilities to do virtually
anything right from their browser
and this opens up a whole new social
and marketing opportunities for Web
developers to tap into. In this
quick guide, we will outline links
to tutorials and tools that will get
you started to develop Firefox
extensions.
Getting started
The first thing is to take a look at
some example extensions available on
the
Mozilla add-ons directory. You
will notice that add-ons can be of
different types: status bar panel,
toolbar, sidebar or even as
right-click context menus. I tend to
prefer sidebars because it makes
development a lot easier with the
ability to easily call an HTML file
and display it within the user's
browser. Using AJAX you can then
dynamically update the sidebar and
even include some browser's based
notifications.
Once you decide on the type of
add-on you'd like to develop, it is
now time to prepare your Firefox for
development. It is recommended to
setup
different profiles so that you
do not mess up your current
installation of Firefox when
debugging or testing. There are a
few other
suggestions from Mozilla as to
how to prepare your Firefox for an
extension development environment.
Anatomy of a Firefox Extension
All Firefox extensions share the
same file and folder structure and
they have a .xpi file extension. An
.xpi file is nothing more than a
.zip file that has been renamed.
This means that you can download
existing add-ons and extract them to
view their source. Most of the files
are JavaScript, CSS and XUL (XML
User Interface Language) files.
Mozilla's official guide to
Building an Extension clearly
outlines the content of a typical .XPI
file. You can use an online
Extension Wizard to generate
some of the files and their folder
structure.
Developing, Testing and Packaging
the Extension
Unfortunately the length of this
newsletter wouldn't allow me to
completely explain how to write your
own FireFox add-on, but I will
feature links to some excellent
tutorials.
Firefox Toolbar Tutorial
An in-depth tutorial divided into 8
chapters explaining how to create a
toolbar extension.
Rietta's Firefox Extension
development tutorial
This tutorial will walk-through in
creating a 'Home Page Scheduler'
add-on.
Shortest Tutorial for Firefox
Extension/Toolbar Development!
A short but well explained tutorial
that covers how to create a toolbar
with a Google search feature.
How to create Firefox extensions
Eric Hamiters's guide to creating
extensions using a right-click
context menu as example.
I hope that this articles helps you
getting started. If you have any
questions, feel free to post them on
ProgrammingTalk.com
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Featured Scripts |
|
PHP
|
MCM Backup
Backup your PHP file and MySQL
database to your computer. |
|
JavaScript
|
DG Spinner / Spinbox
A highly customizable JavaScript
spinner control. |
|
Java
|
JS3Upload
Upload images, videos, documents,
etc. to Amazon S3 |
|
|
Ajax Sliding Date-Picker
Enables you to pick dates with a
simple slider bar. |
|
Flash
|
Interactive Map
Create a visual presentation of any
area using any image as map. |
|
Python
|
cyn.in
An open source group collaboration
software. |
|
CFML |
FAQManager
A FAQ application with categories
and commenting support. |
|
ScreenToaster - Web based screen
recording |
People love to watch videos. Offering
how-to and demo screencasts of your software
and Web applications helps to cut down your
support and marketing efforts. Most of the
screen recorders available are desktop
based, but
ScreenToaster is a free browser-based
screen recorder application. This means that
you do not need to download anything and it
will work under any platform: Windows, Mac
OS X and Linux. (Java Runtime plug-in is
required though).
Some of the features of ScreenToaster
includes live audio capture, embed webcam in
screen capture and subtitles support. It
will save your file in .flv format and
provides links for Web site embedding. It
also supports export in .avi format.
|
Fire Eagle - Build Geo-Aware Web
Applications |
Geo-aware services is going to become
increasingly important as more people access
the Internet from their phone.
Fire
Eagle is a new service from Yahoo's
Brickhouse that allows developers to easily
build geo-aware services. End users can
store, update and share their location
information with services and applications
that they have chosen and authorized.
Lightpole, Plazes are some of the Web
services already making use of Fire Eagle's
API based on the OAuth standard. In terms of
privacy, users can always turn off tracking
at any point and also delete any past geo
data stored.
|
Special Thanks to HostGator |
We'd like to thank
HostGator for the use of their
servers in delivering your HotScripts.com
newsletter to your inbox. HostGator -
"Eating up the competition, since 2002."
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