Christopher Finke writes about software, woodworking, and other creative endeavors.

Category: Mozilla Firefox

  • Slashdotter updated to 2.0

    I’ve updated the Slashdotter Firefox extension to make it compatible with Slashdot’s latest decision changes. “Hide/Show Replies” is working again, the BSD section has been added to the “Styles” options panel, and most of the code has been rewritten due to the fact that we’re no longer living in a Firefox 1.0 world. Thanks to…

  • YouTube Comment Snob updated

    YouTube Comment Snob is an extension for the Firefox Web browser that allows you to filter YouTube comments based on spelling, capitalization, and punctuation usage. I’ve updated YouTube Comment Snob to work with YouTube’s latest redesign, as well as to add compatibility for Firefox 3. It’s available for download from the Mozilla Add-ons sandbox until…

  • Recommended by 4 out of 5 Mozillas

    Mozilla updated their recommended add-ons list today (see this blog post by Basil Hashem for the full story), but the main change I’d like to draw your attention to is that both Mahalo Share and Feed Sidebar were added to the list. Hurray!

  • Finding unused entities in your Firefox extensions

    If you’ve maintained a Firefox extension for any amount of time, you know that you can accumulate unused entities as you change the UI or add/remove features. They just pile up in your .dtd and .properties files, taking up space. Here’s a bash script that will list out any entities or entries in .properties files…

  • 7 ways to be a better developer

    Over the past few months, I’ve been thinking about ways to become a better software developer, specifically in terms of Firefox extension development. I’m listing the ways that I came up with here; most of it can be generalized to the development of any end-user facing program or application, but I wrote it with extension…

  • Firefox development productivity tip

    Since I always use Firefox as a single window with many tabs (and have become quite adept at switching quickly between tabs, but not so fast at switching between windows), having the Error Console open in a separate window always slows me down. What I’ve done is created a bookmark on my toolbar (right-click, select…

  • Feed Sidebar 2.0

    Feed Sidebar 2.0 has been released. Upgrade now to enable filtering your feeds with the search bar and to experience the big improvements in performance and memory usage. Filter your feeds with the search bar. You can install it at Mozilla Add-ons.

  • Very important news for Firefox extension developers

    If you’ve written an extension for Firefox and you want it to work correctly in Firefox 3, read this right now. The ID of the navigational toolbox has been changed from “navigator-toolbox” to “browser-toolbox,” and you’ll need to update your code to reflect this change. Basically, if any part of your extension adds a toolbar…

  • Mahalo Share Goes to 11

    One of the latest things I’ve been working on at Mahalo is Mahalo Share. It’s a utility that automatically posts links that you want to share to 11 different services: del.icio.us, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, your Tumblr blog, Ma.gnolia, Faves, Pownce, Mahalo, StumbleUpon, and/or Google Bookmarks. All of this cross-posting is done behind the scenes using…

  • Facebook Scavenger: Now with vCard support

    I’ve updated Facebook Scavenger (a Firefox extension that saves a backup your Facebook friends’ profile data) to add vCard export support. You can download this new version (1.1) from the Facebok Scavenger homepage, and you might want to hurry. A little birdie told me that this handy tool might not be available for too much…

  • Take your Facebook data with you

    Earlier today, I mentioned that it wouldn’t be out of the question to write a Firefox extension that would grab profile data about your Facebook friends as you view their profiles so that you could take that data to another service. Given that, allow me to introduce Facebook Scavenger. It’s a Firefox extension that saves…

  • Facebook Image-to-Email: Back from the grave

    A while back I mentioned that Facebook Image-to-Email (a Firefox extension that converts Facebook’s e-mail address images to plain-text) was broken after some unknown change was made by Facebook. I am happy to announce that it is working again, after I re-tooled it with a different method for accessing the image data of those e-mail…

  • Netscape is dead; long live Mozilla.

    Tom just posted the official announcement: As of February 1, 2008, Netscape will no longer exist as a product-producing entity. “AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given…

  • Facebook Image-to-Email: Broken Again

    I am aware that the Facebook Image-to-Email Firefox extension is (once again) broken, and given that version 1.1 installed on Firefox 2.0.0.8 was working, and now version 1.1 installed on Firefox 2.0.0.8 is not working, it has to be due to a change that Facebook made. The problem is that I can’t discern any relevant…

  • Facebook Image-to-Email Working Again

    I’ve just updated the Facebook Image-to-Email Firefox extension to be compatible with Facebook’s new image generation algorithm. (Facebook Image-to-Email converts e-mail addresses in images to plain text.) This new version should be a little more robust; if it can’t convert the image to text, it appends a small question mark after the image, rather than…

  • OPML Support for Firefox updated

    I’ve updated the OPML Support for Firefox extension to be compatible with the latest Firefox 3 (Minefield) alphas. The compatibility changes were more than just bumping the maxVersion, since Firefox 3’s bookmark and history architecture has been completely reworked as Places, but the awesome new FUEL project (Firefox User Extension Library) is an incredible asset,…

  • If you’re looking for a job, I bet Mozilla’s hiring.

    Mozilla seems to be having a problem retaining their employees. Last week, the only two developers paid to work on Thunderbird quit, and today Firefox build engineer Paul Reed announced that he’s leaving. I wonder what’s up…

  • Convert Facebook e-mail images to actual e-mail links

    The massively popular social network Facebook uses images to display the e-mail addresses of your friends, making it impossible to copy the e-mail address or click on it to send e-mails to your friends, thus making Facebook’s own proprietary in-site messaging system more attractive to its users. Yesterday, Gervase Markham posited that it should be…

  • Mahalo Follow

    Tonight at GnomeDex, Jason introduced Mahalo Follow, Mahalo’s first Firefox extension release, and a project in which I’ve invested a fair amount of effort. Follow includes two components: (1) a Mahalo toolbar (with the requisite links and search box) that also sports a dropdown of the Mahalo directory and buttons that let you say whether…

  • Two new Firefox extensions

    I’ve been working on a few Firefox extensions for various third-parties, and two of them got upgrades this week: GreatSummary: A handy webpage summarization tool. Long Wikipedia articles are no match for this bad boy. An add-on for CouponCraze.com. I’d have to say that Christian at CouponCraze is the most efficient client I’ve ever worked…

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