Javascript

Just thought I’d point out some new content appearing on the Mozilla Developer Center (MDC).

How to create a rich text or HTML WYSIWYG type editor in Mozilla has come up a few times so I thought a post was in order. Mozilla has a rich text editing system (called Midas) and an API similar to Internet Explorer’s. Mozilla, like Internet Explorer, supports the ability to make an entire document editable by setting the designMode property of the document object. Once in design mode, the document can be manipulated using various DHTML commands.

Firefox 3’s offline capabilities have been getting some attention lately: Chris Double’s post on porting Zimbra to use offline shows-off the potential. Robert O’Callahan and John Resig give details on the different pieces of the capabilities, namely: Offline Cache, Offline Events and DOMStorage.

FUEL is the little library that John Resig and I are working on which should make developing extensions a little easier. It’s been a while since we last talked about it so I thought an update was in order.

Cédric Savarese has a demo of using XUL to make a richer HTML form. Cédric’s approach is different than my XUL-in-Internet Explorer idea. His method only uses XUL in a XUL-enabled browser (Firefox, SeaMonkey or Netscape). In other browsers, it falls back to DHTML elements.

Removing obstacles for extension developers is my group’s primary task at Mozilla. There are lots of ways we can do this and areas include documentation, tutorials, samples and tools. One thing that becomes clear after watching and helping extension developers is the difficulty some have getting familiar with the Mozilla framework and the plethora of object and interfaces available. Not only are some of the concepts foreign, but in many cases there are no clear ways for extension developers to achieve their goals. There are places to get help. The Mozilla’s IRC channels are a great place to ask questions, especially #extdev.

If you’re new to Firefox extension or XULRunner programming, one of the first things you may want to do is find a good tutorial to help get a “hello world” project bootstrapped. Mozilla Developer Center (MDC) has more than a few to help you get started: Firefox Sidebar, Firefox Statusbar, XULRunner Application. We are working to get more on the way too.