Since the beginning, I was using Songbird Developer Tools to help me create add-ons for Songbird. In what consist DevTools ? It’s a pack of different Tools originally designed for Firefox and globally the Mozilla platform (Gecko/XULRunner). Looking at the description :
- The Feathers Wizard, used to set up feathers development projects
- The Extension Wizard, which creates a HelloWorld extension and UI sample code
- Options to disable XUL caching and refresh the UI
- More debug output
- The XUL Periodic Table, so you can test all the standard XUL widgets
- Easy access to the Profile Manager
- A great big bug report button
- Javascript debugger and test environment
While this was quite useful, Songbird was evolving (new features, new API etc.), and nobody was taking care of this add-on, except fixing errors and bumping maxVersion over and over.
Since it’s a great add-on, I decided to improve it, by doing some modifications :
- Since Songbird 1.4.3, customs media view page can have their own graphic button (like BirdQuizz for example). When creating a Media View, you now have the code to show this button.
- Since the Purple Rain feather, toolbar buttons changed and developers have to provide the basic button. When creating a toolbar button, you now have a good graphic template with correct sizes in the CSS file.
- Media View created now comes with a title (in page) to prevent the media tab showing the chrome URI (not pretty !)
- Each add-on created now comes with a default icon for the add-on (iconURL), I did this since many people forgot or avoid to use an icon, this is a important step for your add-on to be recognized.
- Remove of XULPlanet links since it’s closed and correct a lot of Mozilla Developer Center links. (hurray new website is live !)
- Delete the ability to add about box in the wizard, this was useless since the Mozilla add-ons manager generate itself the about box. I think this feature was dedicated to Firefox 2.0 extensions, but not sure. Also for developers, instead of doing about inside a XUL file, you should make an html page.
- When creating a Display Pane in the wizard you will be now able to choose which pane you will use ! Service Pane bottom, Content Pane bottom and Right Sidebar. You can even choose multiple pane to use.
- Remove of useless Display Pane translation strings if the user didn’t choose to make a Display Pane
- Ability to create both a Radio and Services node for the Service Pane in Wizard : This is a major feature, while you can make use of the service pane for ages in previous Songbird versions, this feature will let you help create an addon with a Radio or Services node with code compatible with Songbird 1.8 and more. It’s dedicated to the new Service Pane.
- Plus, once you create an add-on with a Service Pane node, you will have a link to the documentation of Service Pane.
- Refine some graphics of the add-on to match Purple Rain feather : both extensions and feathers hello page have a better design for example.
- and of course, maxVersion was set to 1.9.0 to be compatible with “Pink Floyd” release
This is not what we can call an “huge” patch, but it definitely improve Tools for the developers. I think it’s the first step.
WAIT MORE TO COME ?
Yep, I’m considering more cool things to add.
- Ability to create menu button in the toolbar (like AdBlock Plus)
- Ability to choose the position for this button
- Localize the add-on (I should do some test with BabelZilla team)
- More customization for the Service Pane
- Ability to create Search add-on (like SkreemR)
- and more !!!
The patch is not yet committed, and so the official add-on is not up to date yet, but if you want to give a go, you can test this new version by installing this XPI file on your Songbird. (Songbird 1.8 or more recommended)
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