Thanks to all who participated in Extend Firefox 2! We received over 100 entries – an awesome response. We are busy sorting through and evaluating all of the add-ons – lots of innovative, creative work. It’s inspiring to see what all of you have been doing to extend and expand your favorite browser.
We plan to announce the winners at the end of the month. Until then, please let me know if you have questions. Also, stay tuned for Extend Firefox 3, coming in February!
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
It’s time for the second in our series of technical sessions for Extension Developers. Our first session – Mike Beltzner discussing best practices and design patterns for extensions – was awesome. If you missed it, the video can be found here. Definitely check it out, great content and questions.
Our next session will take place next Wednesday, 11/28 at 2:00pmPST. We will be discussing parts of an extension, interacting with web content, and general extension development. And of course we’ll be taking your questions! Next week’s session will be hosted by Air Mozilla and moderated by Asa Dotzler.
WHAT: Firefox Extension Developer Roundtable
WHO: Mark Finkle, Mozilla Platform Evangelist and Dave Townsend, Firefox Engineer
WHEN: Wednesday, 11/28, 2:00pmPST
Details about the broadcast format can be found at Air Mozilla. We will send updated connection information soon. Get your questions ready!
In case you missed last week’s technical session – Mike Beltzner discussing best practices and design patterns for extensions – it’s now available online. Definitely check it out, great content and questions.
We will be posting this afternoon about the second in our series – Extension Developer Roundtable on Wednesday 11/28. Stay tuned!
We hope you are all hacking away on those killer add-ons for Extend Firefox 2! As mentioned in the Developer Resources section of the site, throughout the contest we will be hosting technical sessions on everything from Making a JavaScript XPCOM Component to User Experience 101. Our first developer chat will take place this Wednesday, 11/14, at 1pm PST. The session will be recorded and posted on the site, but please do join us on Wednesday by viewing the webcast or via conference call or IRC. Directions for all are below.
This week’s session:
WHO: Mike Beltzner – Mozilla Phenomenologist and User Experience guru – will be discussing best practices and design patterns for extensions. Questions welcome and encouraged!
WHEN: Wednesday, 11/14, 1:00pm PST
Please join us on Wednesday for an awesome session and some great Q&A.
Thanks,
The Extend Firefox team
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IRC or Audio Only
* Join us in the #brownbag IRC channel
* For audio only, use this conference call number:
o 1) Dial 1-800-707-2533 (password 369) or 1-650-215-1282, ext 91#
o 2) Then dial Conference number 8604#
o Note: Do not use this with the webcast. The delay between the conference call and the webcast video will drive you nuts.
o You should dial into the conference number if you want to ask questions
Viewing the Webcasts
* Run Quicktime Player, VLC, or Windows Media Player (or any other player capable of playing streaming MPEG-4), tell it to open a URL (this is Command-U or Control-U in Quicktime, not sure what in WMP or others), paste in the following URL: rtsp://webcasts.mozilla.com:8000/brownbag.sdp
* It should prompt you for a password.
* Username: security Password: m0z1lla
* If it does not prompt you for a password, you can try entering it at the beginning of the URL, such as rtsp://user:pass@webcasts.mozilla.com:8000/brownbag.sdp (but replace user and pass with the username and password – intentionally left out in the URL to avoid copy/paste mistakes in public places).
Last week several Mozilla folks headed to AJAX Experience, a developers conference in Boston. Part of Mozilla’s presence at the show included a brainstorm contest around Extend Firefox 2. Attendees submitted their coolest, wackiest and most innovative extension ideas to be judged at the end of the week. Check out some of the winning ideas:
• From Josh Ain, an add-on that would color code links to show what type of media they led to – video, a blog, mp3, etc
• From Ajay Reddy, Pregnancy ticker
• From Rick O’Donnell, The Kid Confounder: A novel take on parental controls that allows parents to configure messages that would appear in lieu of “blacklisted” sites or when a child’s time limit ran up on the computer. Messages could include a straightforward error message or more humorous ones such as “Looks like someone has time for homework now” or “Snow days mean Dad doesn’t shovel” and more.
• From Giovanni Flammia, an album view of your bookmarks, tabs, or history like in the iTunes or new MacOSX interface.
• From Brent Ashley, the Talk-like-a-pirate page translation!
• From Tom Baker, an add-on that turns your browser into any vintage computer display – PDP-1, IBM SCAMP, Pal, Apple II, Commodore 64, etc.
• From Denis Moskowitz, an add-on that automatically rewrites all page text in the form of a Shakespearian sonnet.
So what’s your big idea? Let these inspire you and get started on your genius extension or add your ideas to the wiki. You don’t have to be a developer to contribute! What are you waiting for?