Mozilla Platform, Wizards and FizzyPop

Building things with the Mozilla Platform usually involves dealing with some boilerplate. Extensions have install and chrome manifests and overlays. XULRunner applications have application and chrome manifests and default preferences. XPCOM, even the simpler JavaScript XPCOM, has modules, factories and categories. It’s more than enough to slow developers down, especially new-to-Mozilla developers.

That’s why I have always been thankful to Ted Mielczarek for his Extension Wizard and JS XPCOM Wizard. Those tools have been helpful to me and countless other Mozilla developers.

Because of their great utility, I started to think that Mozilla should host, develop and extend the tools. Turns out, this pleases Ted :) - Therefore, I’ve put together a plan for FizzyPop, a simple project to develop/extend tools that assist Mozilla developers.

I had done a similar project with XUL Explorer, template-driven wizards to create extensions and xul applications. Turns out the Web has a wider reach than a desktop tool, especially for these types of scaffolding projects. In any case, I am taking the templates I use in XUL Explorer and converting them for use in a PHP web application.

I plan to get an SVN repo, bugzilla support and a Mozilla hosted for the project. We want to turn this into a contributor-base project. I’ll let you know when the prototype is ready to start hacking.