Announcing Add-on SDK 1.0b4

The Jetpack team is pleased to announce the release of Add-on SDK 1.0b4. This version, the fourth in the series of beta releases of Mozilla’s downloadable software development kit for easily building Firefox
add-ons, includes new APIs, enhancements to modules, plenty of new features, and a bunch of bug fixes. Notable improvements include:

  • Brand new Passwords API which allows you to retrieve and store credentials from the host application – use passwords!
  • Enhancements to the Panel API that improve the appearance and placement of anchored panels.
  • A new “once” method added to the EventEmitter API, which enables listeners to receive an event notification only once, the next time the event occurs.
  • A new tab property added to the Worker API, which returns the tab associated with that worker.

To get started building add-ons with the SDK, download it and then check out the documentation! Also, check out the Release Notes for more details, known issues, and installation notes.

And don’t forget that add-ons created with the SDK are “restartless” in the brand spanking new Firefox 4, so users can install and use them without having to restart their browser! Make sure you grab Firefox 4 yourself, if you have not!

As always, we’d love to hear from you about your experiences with the release! You can contact us in a variety of ways:

post to our discussion group
chat with us on irc.mozilla.org #jetpack
report a bug
check out the source and contribute bug fixes, enhancements, or documentation