Mozilla Labs

Happy Holidays from Mozilla and the Extend Firefox team! The clock is ticking, are your extensions ready to go? Only 10 days left to put the final touches on your genius idea. Remember, the contest closes on December 31, 2007 at 11:59pm PST!

We are eager to see what you’ve come up with. As always, let us know if you have any last minute questions or needs. Thanks for being involved and making this contest great. Good luck to all!

Hi. I’m Michael Wu, a winner of the 2006 Extend Firefox contest. I’m currently a 3rd year undergraduate studying computer engineering at Rutgers, but when I’m not busy finishing school work at the last second or wasting time, I hack Mozilla and Linux code. My first attempt at Mozilla hacking was actually due to the first Extend Firefox contest. When I first spotted news of the Extend Firefox contest somewhere on mozillazine and saw the grand prize, I knew I wanted it. I decided to temporarily drop all my other personal coding projects at the time so I could singlemindedly focus on learning how to write a Firefox extension and writing some.

The necessary documentation was found across three sites - developer.mozilla.org, xulplanet.com, and kb.mozillazine.org. That provided a good chunk of information that got me started and the majority of the rest was found by poking around in DOM inspector. It took me about 1-2 weeks poking around and reading documentation before I was somewhat comfortable with what Firefox provided and putting down
actual xul/css/js code. Should be a bit easier these days with better documentation and APIs, but even back then, I thought it wasn’t too hard. (all relative, however! I was hacking a Linux driver before I did Mozilla)

I started off with a simple goal but as I put more code down and looked at what worked, I gradually expanded the scope of what the extension did, dropped features that didn’t have time, constantly tested, and ended up with Reveal. The process was as important as the original idea from where I started.

Anyways, it seems to have worked out. It led to two summer internships at Mozilla and all sorts of other (positive!) things that would take too long to enumerate here. No guarantee that winning this contest will change your life, but it sure helps a college student. Good luck to those trying this year!

Just a reminder that tomorrow is our next Extend Firefox 2 developer chat. Details are below. The end of the contest is drawing near, you don’t want to miss this opportunity!

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It’s time for the third in our series of technical sessions for Extension Developers. This session will take place tomorrow, Thursday, 12/13 at 2:00pmPST. Michael Wu, last years Extend Firefox winner, will discuss the process behind building the winning extension. Michael took a gamble last year, shelving all of his other projects to devote two months to learning how to write a killer extension. His winning entry was innovative and polished, and ultimately landed him a job as a Mozilla intern!

WHAT: IRC Chat with Michael Wu
WHO: Michael Wu, Extend Firefox 2006 winner and Mozilla Intern - summer 2007
WHEN: Thursday, 12/13, 2:00pmPST

The chat will be hosted on irc.mozilla.org, #extdev. Get your questions ready!

Thanks,
The Extend Firefox Team

It’s time for the third in our series of technical sessions for Extension Developers. Our second session - an Air Mozilla featuring Mark Finkle and Dave Townsend - was awesome. Archives of the talk will be available online soon.

Our next session will take place next Thursday, 12/13 at 2:00pmPST. Michael Wu, last years Extend Firefox winner, will discuss the process behind building the winning extension. Michael took a gamble last year, shelving all of his other projects to devote two months to learning how to write a killer extension. His winning entry was innovative and polished, and ultimately landed him a job as a Mozilla intern!

WHAT: IRC Chat with Michael Wu
WHO: Michael Wu, Extend Firefox 2006 winner and Mozilla Intern - summer 2007
WHEN: Thursday, 12/13, 2:00pmPST

The chat will be hosted on irc channel #extdev. We will send updated information early next week. Get your questions ready!

Thanks,
The Extend Firefox Team