Firefox Mobile 1.1 Beta 1 and Add-ons

With Firefox 1.1 Beta 1 for Maemo ready to go and the final release not far away, now is an excellent time for add-on developers to update their add-ons. Obviously, Mozilla wants as many add-ons as possible to be compatible with the latest version of Firefox Mobile.

AMO (addons.mozilla.org) is ready for add-ons to set maxVersion to 1.1.*

Please test your add-on before bumping the version. You can use the nightly builds for Maemo, as well as the desktop versions to help test. Here are a few things to keep in mind while testing add-ons:

• Site Menu: The site menu was redesigned and uses different XUL and JS. If your add-on adds a command to the site menu, please check out the changes and update your code.
• Context Menu: Long taps (or right clicks on desktop) will display a context menu, but only limited targets are allowed (images, links and mailto: links). If your add-on can benefit form the context menu, use it. But use it wisely.
• Startup: When starting the browser, the Awesomebar Screen is no longer shown. A true Start Page system is now used. Adjust your add-on startup process if needed.
• Portrait Mode: Firefox for Maemo (and Android) now supports dynamic portrait/landscape orientation. Make sure your add-on works well in both orientations.
• Theme Breakage: Check to make sure the add-on is not including the chrome://global/content/global.css stylesheet. It will break the mobile platform CSS. An easy way to see this breakage is to look at the toggle buttons in Preferences UI. If those buttons look like checkboxes, the CSS is broken. This seems to be very common for new add-ons.
• Check for Errors: When testing the add-on, launch the browser from a terminal and use | fennec –jsconsole | to open the JS Error Console. Make sure no errors appear in the console while testing the add-on.

If you have any questions, please use Mozilla IRC and join the #mobile channel. Use mibbit if you don’t have an IRC client. I’ll be there (mfinkle), as will many other helpful people who can help answer your questions.