New Extension Wizard

Ted Mielczarek · Post by **Ted Mielczarek** » February 14th, 2006, 3:29 pm

http://ted.mielczarek.org/code/mozilla/extensionwiz/

Please try it out and let me know what you think. I get tired of copying one of my old extensions every time I want to make a new extension, so I created this tool. It's something of a successor to my old install.rdf generator.

I have some ideas that I plan on implementing, such as options to generate skeleton code for common features, like toolbar buttons, sidebars, options dialogs, preferences.

What would be useful to you?

-Ted

ericjung · Post by **ericjung** » February 14th, 2006, 8:11 pm

OH MY GOD THIS IS INCREDIBLE!

Ted, I love you.

One question: what is "Extension ID"? I thought it would be <em:id/> in install.rdf, but I can't enter a GUID, e.g., 5872365e-67d1-4afd-9480-fd293bebd20d

Much love on Valentines Day,
grimholtz

cyberrus · Post by **cyberrus** » February 14th, 2006, 8:29 pm

jeez! half work done...

Schrade · Post by **Schrade** » February 14th, 2006, 8:58 pm

Wow, nice! Can you do one for themes too? There is this one but it's out of date: http://www.tecknik.net/themer/

Ted Mielczarek · Post by **Ted Mielczarek** » February 14th, 2006, 9:58 pm

Happy Valentine's Day!

grimholtz: it is em:id, but since this only supports Firefox 1.5, it only accepts email-like IDs, which are nicer for everyone. Use like grimholtz@yourdomain.com or whatever.

cyberrus: That's the whole point! I want extension development to be about the fun parts, like figuring out cool things, not about the boring boilerplate code.

Schrade: I probably could, but I've never made a theme, having no artistic ability. If someone can point me at an extensive list of things that should go into one, then I might do it.

I have updated the tool with a few more options. You can now ask it to generate a pref panel, select an icon for your extension, and generate a custom about dialog.

Feedback welcome!

-Ted

RaiseMachine · Post by **RaiseMachine** » February 14th, 2006, 10:03 pm

Nice work Ted!

I say go for it with regards to your initial ideas, more skeleton code done the better imho.

Philip Chee · Post by **Philip Chee** » February 14th, 2006, 10:43 pm

Ted Mielczarek wrote:grimholtz: it is em:id, but since this only supports Firefox 1.5, it only accepts email-like IDs, which are nicer for everyone. Use like grimholtz@yourdomain.com or whatever.

I thought that email like IDs are optional and that UUIDs are still accepted.
Still needs some work for seamonkey extensions.
skin/ should be skin/classic/.

Phil

Pike · Post by **Pike** » February 15th, 2006, 3:17 am

Very nifty.

p.s. If the "Extension Short Name" field contains any uppercase characters, you get the not very helpful: "Short Name must be a string of alphabetic characters."

Bloodeye · Post by **Bloodeye** » February 15th, 2006, 7:08 am

How about a client-side version?

Actually, I had thought about creating something similar for myself. An extension that would gather user input thru a wizard, and then generate a "new extension" with a flat layout within the current profile. Then if I wanted to test\try something I could be coding it rather quickly.

Ted Mielczarek · Post by **Ted Mielczarek** » February 15th, 2006, 7:13 am

Phil: Yes, they're still supported, but I'm not encouraging their use for new extensions. ;-)

I'll put in support for them if people really want them. I wasn't really intending to support seamonkey either, then I'd have to deal with all the pre-1.5 extension crap.
Any particular reason skin/ should be skin/classic?

Pike: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132183

I guess I should put "lowercase" in that error message?

Philip Chee · Post by **Philip Chee** » February 15th, 2006, 7:39 am

Ted Mielczarek wrote:Phil: Yes, they're still supported, but I'm not encouraging their use for new extensions. I'll put in support for them if people really want them.

Not really, but you should put a note on the format

Ted Mielczarek wrote: I wasn't really intending to support seamonkey either, then I'd have to deal with all the pre-1.5 extension crap.

Heh, I was just pulling your leg.

Ted Mielczarek wrote:Any particular reason skin/ should be skin/classic?

So that it's easier to add skin/modern or skin/winstripe or skin/fusion later on?

Also your .ZIP is one level too deep. the content/defaults/locale/skin directories and other files should be in the root of the XPI/ZIP, not under extname.ZIP/extname/*

Phil

asqueella · Post by **asqueella** » February 15th, 2006, 7:46 am

So that it's easier to add skin/modern or skin/winstripe or skin/fusion later on?

Very few extensions come with several themes in the XPI. Usually the themes "support" some extensions by providing alternative skins for them.

Pike · Post by **Pike** » February 15th, 2006, 7:59 am

Ted Mielczarek wrote:Pike: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132183 I guess I should put "lowercase" in that error message?

Yeah, I wanted to see whether uppercase was handled, it'd definitely be more newbie friendly if you mentioned the lowercase thing (or just fixed it automatically).

supernova_00 · Post by **supernova_00** » February 15th, 2006, 8:28 am

Thanks Ted! great job

Ted Mielczarek · Post by **Ted Mielczarek** » February 15th, 2006, 8:52 am

Phil: I zip it that way so you can just unzip it somewhere and it will create a project directory for you. Most open source software is archived like that (usually in .tar.gz though) and it's pretty convenient.

I've got some more additions that I'll get to sometime today, and I'll do a little cleanup based on your suggestions here as well.

Definitely on my plate next are adding a toolbar button and context menu item.