Proposal: Easy way to find/install themes & extensions

scragz · Post by **scragz** » May 11th, 2003, 2:43 pm

Jason_P wrote:Personally, I think it's a grest idea.

Here's my interpretation of how the idea would work:...

I think it would be better in the options than in a sidebar.

Dunderklumpen · Post by **Dunderklumpen** » May 11th, 2003, 2:47 pm

Hendikins wrote:
boutteau@APC wrote:Why not signed by Mozilla.org with a certificate when "official" and not signed when "non official"?
(ie "official" means "validated" or "released with a release number" like for moz or FB.....)

I'm sure we could work out some form of certification system involving trusted QA folks and developers. That way extensions and themes that are known to work with a milestone without problems can be "certified" for use with that milestone.

Good idea. I think that would be a great help for anyone to know what extensions and themes that are supposed to work with a specific version of Firebird.

Jason_P · Post by **Jason_P** » May 11th, 2003, 2:48 pm

scragz wrote:I think it would be better in the options than in a sidebar.

To-may-to, To-mah-to. Same difference, you get the idea

Either way, integrating *bird with some kind of Theme/Extension service is, IMO, a pretty good idea.

scragz · Post by **scragz** » May 11th, 2003, 4:36 pm

Jason_P wrote:
scragz wrote:I think it would be better in the options than in a sidebar.

To-may-to, To-mah-to. Same difference, you get the idea

Either way, integrating *bird with some kind of Theme/Extension service is, IMO, a pretty good idea.

Either way there'd be a ten page thread on why they should do it the other way.

Has anyone submitted this as an official bz feature request?

jedbro · Post by **jedbro** » May 11th, 2003, 5:26 pm

scragz wrote:Has anyone submitted this as an official bz feature request?

I don't think this is a feature request you could sumbit. This isn't just implementing a "feature" it's starting up a whole infrostructure that requires man-power and desicive owners who will manage the update lists.
Seems like a role for the community, not bother the devs about it. (although I could be wrong).

What I'd really like to see implemented *soon* is Extension Uninstall. (I think Hayatt was going to work on this??).

chrisgeleven · Post by **chrisgeleven** » May 11th, 2003, 5:58 pm

jedbro wrote:
scragz wrote:Has anyone submitted this as an official bz feature request?

I don't think this is a feature request you could sumbit. This isn't just implementing a "feature" it's starting up a whole infrostructure that requires man-power and desicive owners who will manage the update lists.
Seems like a role for the community, not bother the devs about it. (although I could be wrong).

What I'd really like to see implemented *soon* is Extension Uninstall. (I think Hayatt was going to work on this??).

I really think this should be part of Firebird and there should be a feature request filed.

Considering how much emphasis is being placed on extensions, an interface like what we have been talking about on this thread has to be included by default. Considering the press that Firebird is/will be receiving, wouldn't it be great for reviewers to say "Click on the Find Extensions button to launch Mozilla's brand new extension finder application, listing top quality extensions covering everything from blocking ads to download status improvements to tabbed browsing enhancements. This feature easily beats anything other browsers offer to extend their browsing abilities."

I would love it if this application also could check for version conflicts, notify the user of updates, and even of protential conflicts (such as installing two tabbed browsing extensions).

Obviously the community will need to be heavily involved this from the standpoint of selecting extensions and themes to be listed, figuring out protential conflicts, etc. But the actual coding and the implimentation of this feature fits so perfectly with what Firebird and company are trying to accomplish with the new roadmap that I cannot see this not becoming a feature request.

scragz · Post by **scragz** » May 11th, 2003, 6:01 pm

jedbro wrote:I don't think this is a feature request you could sumbit. This isn't just implementing a "feature" it's starting up a whole infrostructure that requires man-power and desicive owners who will manage the update lists.
Seems like a role for the community, not bother the devs about it. (although I could be wrong).

It would require some work by the devs to put it into the options/side-panel once we figured out how we were going to work everything out. I haven't heard any negative responses yet, so what's the procedure for getting something like this going? Just tell me what to do.

asa · Post by **asa** » May 11th, 2003, 6:49 pm

chrisgeleven wrote:I really think this should be part of Firebird and there should be a feature request filed.

Without a patch, something like this isn't going to he happening any time soon. If it can't be developed independently as one big patch to Mozilla Firebird, then maybe better to have someone(s) develop it as an extension at mozdev (or elsewhere) with the intention of seing it eventually made part of the core (when it's good enough).

--Asa

xfranky · Post by **xfranky** » May 12th, 2003, 10:05 am

scragz wrote:
Jason_P wrote:Personally, I think it's a grest idea.

Here's my interpretation of how the idea would work:...

I think it would be better in the options than in a sidebar.

Opera offers it as en extension ("Hotlist Panel" - together with other News services) in the sidebar...

clav · Post by **clav** » May 12th, 2003, 10:07 am

well that looks foul. that sidebar is worse than Mozilla's

xfranky · Post by **xfranky** » May 12th, 2003, 10:35 am

clav wrote:well that looks foul. that sidebar is worse than Mozilla's

IIRC we were talking about FB's themes... this was just a comparison between the theme installation system, not the sidebars...

clav · Post by **clav** » May 12th, 2003, 12:04 pm

XF wrote:IIRC we were talking about FB's themes... this was just a comparison between the theme installation system, not the sidebars...

right. and installation from sidebar looks like a bad choice having seen that screenshot.

Post by **alanjstr** » May 12th, 2003, 12:04 pm

I've talked to djst and he said you can use his database of themes and extensions.

http://texturizer.net/firebird/loadExtensions.js
http://texturizer.net/firebird/loadThemes.js

I wrote the original implementation, so feel free to ask me questions.

Code: Select all

function theme(themeName) {
  this.name = themeName;
  this.author = new Array();
  this.authorEmail = new Array();
  this.description = '';
  this.preview = ''; 
  this.homepage = '';
  this.version = '';
  this.updated = '';
  this.size = '';
  this.installFile = '';
}
var themeArray = new Array();

scragz · Post by **scragz** » May 12th, 2003, 1:08 pm

For the extensions, we should add in a conflicts property, maybe an array of ID's from the db. We should also plan ahead and add in a requires array in case any of them depend on each other in the future. We definately need to add in the version number and last updated like the themes have if we plan to allow updating.

Upon closer examination, it looks like this isn't really coming out of a database. I think that they should probably be put into a proper db and have those files created dynamically. Then we could have a theme/extension submission page where people just fill out a form and the extension gets put in the database pending review. We would set it so that it wasn't actually displayed in the list until it was tested by some one and approved.

Just some ideas. I could do the php to do what I described above if you guys want to do it that way. It seems more powerful than to just have some text files that are updated by hand.

Post by **alanjstr** » May 12th, 2003, 1:10 pm

Sounds good, though an XML output would be good. Maybe set it up as a web service.

Proposal: Easy way to find/install themes & extensions

Re: Why not signed by Mozilla.org with a certificate ?