Fennec - Let's Build Some Add-ons
We’re in the last weeks of development before releasing Fennec 1.0 to the world. There has been a lot of great testing and feedback. I think we have a well defined set of things to work on for 1.0 and a good idea of what we want to look at for 1.0+.
However, there is one area I think we haven’t had enough testing and feedback - add-on development in Fennec. Add-on developers are a tricky bunch. They can make you re-think your architecture, brainstorm many new features and find lot’s of hidden bugs. We need more developers working on Fennec add-ons.
We have a small, but growing collection of Fennec-specific add-on developer resources. If you’re interested in building add-ons for Fennec, here’s a list of resources you might find helpful:
- Architecture Overview
- Extensions Basics - Look here first
- Code Snippets - Doing things in Fennec might be different than Firefox
- Best Practices for Building Extensions
- Creating an Options UI for an Extension
- Tips for Creating a Robust UI - XUL and CSS to the rescue
The documents have been, and will continue to be updated. Feel free to give feedback on any of the documents. What information or snippets are missing? Use comments, IRC channels (#mobile) or even file some bugs.
Fennec for Maemo and Fennec for Windows Mobile both support add-ons. In fact, the same add-on could be used on both platforms. So get out there are start building.
Oh, one thing I wanted to ask before you go. What features of a mobile device would make building mobile add-ons really kick ass? Support for geo-location? Accessing the camera? Making calls or sending SMS? Leave comments and please go into detail :)