Xpcom

After getting sidetracked for a while, I have finally made some progress on XUL Explorer. I have been tinkering around with the editor and integrating the XUL validator. I also reorganized the code a little so I could support sidebars in the future.

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.

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.

In the spirit of “you can never have too many”, I thought it would be a good idea to document my process of creating an XPCOM object in C++. XPCOM is Mozilla’s cross platform component object model, similar to Microsoft’s COM technology. XPCOM components can be implemented in C, C++, and JavaScript, and can be used from C, C++, and JavaScript. That means you can call JavaScript methods from C++ and vice versa.