Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

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patrickjdempsey
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Lemon Juice, you might want to reach out to Philip Chee and see if he has any advice since he was maintaining a huge batch of converted extensions here: http://xsidebar.mozdev.org/
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Philip Chee
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by Philip Chee »

Scarlettrunner20 wrote:Context Search does NOT work. It should work. It places a blank space where search engines besides Google should appear.

Try this modded version of Context Search:
http://xsidebar.mozdev.org/modifiedmisc.html#contextsearch

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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by Philip Chee »

patrickjdempsey wrote:Lemon Juice, you might want to reach out to Philip Chee and see if he has any advice since he was maintaining a huge batch of converted extensions here: http://xsidebar.mozdev.org/

http://xsidebar.mozdev.org/modifiedmisc.html is a better place to start.

Also: http://downloads.mozdev.org/xsidebar/mods/diffs.zip
If you download this ZIP file and unzip it you'll find lots of .DIFF files like (say) contextsearch046.diff. Each .diff file contains all the changes that I needed to make to get a particular Firefox/Thunderbird extension to work in SeaMonkey. I'm not sure how much of this can be automated, but feel free to ask me questions.

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LoudNoise
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by LoudNoise »

Lemon Juice,

A question here.
1) What will happen when the converted extension is updated by the developer? Will SeaMonkey attempt to install the new one which, of course, won't work?

A suggestion:
1) If possible (and if you haven't), you might want to add the word converted (or something) to the extension name. If someone didn't know or just forgot that it was converted, has a problem and posts to the extension's support area, it will be an extended WTF party. If it was renamed extension (converted) would at least give the dev the ability to be confused right off the bat.
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by zeroleft »

Lemon Juice wrote:If you use this tool then it would be beneficial for all of us if you can post your results in this thread so we can expand the list of which extensions can be ported and which not.


Thank you very much for this Add-on Converter. =D>

I had previously modified keyword.URL Hack! (by editing the install.rdf file), but with Colt that was not enough. It indeed install, but them did not worked ...

Now, Colt extension fully works with SeaMonkey 2.26 (Linux)!
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by Lemon Juice »

Philip Chee wrote:
patrickjdempsey wrote:Lemon Juice, you might want to reach out to Philip Chee and see if he has any advice since he was maintaining a huge batch of converted extensions here: http://xsidebar.mozdev.org/

http://xsidebar.mozdev.org/modifiedmisc.html is a better place to start.

Also: http://downloads.mozdev.org/xsidebar/mods/diffs.zip
If you download this ZIP file and unzip it you'll find lots of .DIFF files like (say) contextsearch046.diff. Each .diff file contains all the changes that I needed to make to get a particular Firefox/Thunderbird extension to work in SeaMonkey. I'm not sure how much of this can be automated, but feel free to ask me questions.


Thanks, the diffs can be especially useful to study in case of problems.

However, my biggest question is about addon SDK extensions. As far as I can see the modified extensions at xsidebar.mozdev.org are a few years old, that is, before the SDK era. There will be a few small adjustments I'll need to make to the current converter but the biggest obstacle seem to be add-ons like QR Code Image Generator - simple but based on the addon SDK I have no idea how to port them and even if it's possible. Can you explain what the current situation is for SeaMonkey in this matter?

LoudNoise wrote:Lemon Juice,

A question here.
1) What will happen when the converted extension is updated by the developer? Will SeaMonkey attempt to install the new one which, of course, won't work?


That is a good question - I can't be sure 100% but I think modded extensions should be safe against updates because SM's appVersion will be quite different from that of Fx or TB so the compatiility check should fail. I haven't tested it yet though as I have automatic updates turned off but I'll do it soon. I don't know if it's possible to mod extensions so that they never auto-update - perhaps by pachaging a fake update.xml?

An ideal would be to get the modded extesnsions to update via the converter as a proxy but I'll give up this idea for now :)

A suggestion:
1) If possible (and if you haven't), you might want to add the word converted (or something) to the extension name. If someone didn't know or just forgot that it was converted, has a problem and posts to the extension's support area, it will be an extended WTF party. If it was renamed extension (converted) would at least give the dev the ability to be confused right off the bat.


A good idea, I might add an optional feature like that. However, I don't know if it should be on by default as I'm not sure if a different name will not break anything (probably not) and I wouldn't like to see the add-on names littered with some additional keywords. What do others think about it?

zeroleft wrote:Now, Colt extension fully works with SeaMonkey 2.26 (Linux)!

Great, thanks for letting us know!
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by patrickjdempsey »

It's pretty simple to get extensions to not update, you just change their ID. When you do that the Application cannot find them on AMO. However, that may be undesirable because it means never getting fixes or new features. It's kind of a toss-up. Also, if you change the ID then you run the risk of the user installing two versions of the same extension at the same time... that could get messy.

I do think it's a good idea to modify the addon name. Since the unique identity of the addon is keyed to it's ID, that should not pose a technical problem, I've changed around the names of my extensions during development many times. I don't know that I'd use parenthesis as the Addons Manager uses those for it's notifications (disabled). I just tested and square brackets will work. How about showing the source application?

Addon Name [from Firefox] 2.4

Other Addons [from Thunderbird] 2.4.0
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by Lemon Juice »

patrickjdempsey wrote:I just tested and square brackets will work. How about showing the source application?

Addon Name [from Firefox] 2.4

Other Addons [from Thunderbird] 2.4.0


This looks like a very good idea. I'll get to it in a couple of days probably when I have some more time.

Meanwhile, I've updated the converter so that the Web of Trust - WOT extension converts well :)
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by Lemon Juice »

patrickjdempsey wrote:It's pretty simple to get extensions to not update, you just change their ID. When you do that the Application cannot find them on AMO. However, that may be undesirable because it means never getting fixes or new features. It's kind of a toss-up.

Well, I thought we wanted to avoid updating so if SM doesn't find the add-on on AMO then it's a good thing, isn't it? Especially that it would not work in most cases, anyway, because SM's appVersion is so much lower than the equivalent Fx's - not to mention screwing up the installation because the updated version would not be modded.

Maybe, it would be best to simply to put up an alert on the converter page to tell people they should disable automatic updates for the modded extensions and that's it? There's no easy way to get auto updates for modded extensions so we need to accept that we must to do it manually.

Also, if you change the ID then you run the risk of the user installing two versions of the same extension at the same time... that could get messy.

Yes, I'd prefer to avoid this.
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by patrickjdempsey »

You know there is a mechanism in the Addons Manager for disabling updates of individual extensions right? Maybe there is an API for that here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add ... donManager
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by LoudNoise »

Why doesn't someone running SeaMonkey download an older version of WOT, convert it and see what happens when you click to have it update? My main concern isn't that it will update but rather what happens when or if it tries. For example, does the other older one still get overwritten? Does SeaMonkey die a horrible death when it tries? Does AMO turn into a gang of fluffy, but savage, bunnies in its confusion (which would be fun to watch)?
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by patrickjdempsey »

My prediction is that it would update, overwrite the modded install.rdf, and upon restart it wouldn't be able to install. Extension updates are not like Firefox security patches which only change certain parts. The whole XPI file is replaced with the new XPI file and all of the modifications disappear.
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by LoudNoise »

I would still check. I would assume you are right about the old one disappearing (if it updated at all, Lemon's got a good point there) but what happens when SeaMonkey finds a extension that it cannot use in a place where it shouldn't be?
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by Scarlettrunner20 »

Lemon Juice wrote:
Scarlettrunner20 wrote:It has gone through some changes over the years and is now known as Tree Style Tabs.

It's really interesting that you were able to get Tree Style Tabs to work somehow in SM because it doesn't work for me - apart from making the tabs higher and the icons distorted nothing else is happening, no buttons to customize and quite a few errors in console :shock:

Context Search does NOT work. It should work. It places a blank space where search engines besides Google should appear.

SM appears to use a different function for getting selected text - try it again, I've updated the converter to cover such cases so Context Search should work fine now!


I wasn't very clear in my post. Tree Style Tabs appeared to install. However, the tabs that were restored by Session Manager when I restarted SM were still across the top. I could click on Options for Tree Style Tabs on SeaMonkey Addons/extensions page. I noted that left side was set as default for Tree Style Tabs and the skin was set at the one I use on Fx (mixed). I was able to change Twisties to black/white. But since the tabs were still horizontal across the top, I don't think Tree Style Tabs was working at all. After I looked at Options and made the Twisties change and closed the Addons tab, I realized I had no Navigation bar but SeaMonkey thought the Navigation bar was turned on but it was missing. I immediately figured that Tree Style Tabs had somehow caused this to happen. Anyhow, Tree Style Tabs did not work on SeaMonkey.

As for Context Search, it now WORKS! :)
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Re: Firefox & Thunderbird Add-on Converter for SeaMonkey

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Since version 4.0, Firefox has used a dramatically different system for tabs than the one used in SeaMonkey. It may be possible that an ancient version of Tree Style Tabs... one from Firefox 3.x era might work... but it may have conflicts with other changes since then.
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