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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Source Code for Mozilla Jetpack Features

Mozilla Labs have released Jetpack, an environment for writing Firefox extensions using JavaScript. It looks pretty neat and I'm interested in trying writing one myself.

The best way to learn a new environment is to look at working examples and you can find a growing number of these in the Jetpack Gallery.

You just install Jetpack and then install the 'Features' that interest you and try them out.

But where is the source code? It's not under the Tools menu and you can't do something simple like right-click the Feature icon in your status bar.

1: Enter 'about:jetpack' in the URL box
2: This brings up a page with links to various things including a tutorial and the API reference.
3: Click on 'Installed Features' to see a list of everything you have installed.
4: Click on 'view source' next to each Feature to bring up the JavaScript source in a new window.

I'm not a fan of too many browser extensions but some of them like Firebug, YSlow and S3Fox are invaluable. Jetpack will make it easier for folks like me to contribute new extensions.

Of course this only applies to the Firefox browser...

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