Yesterday I took <a href="http://www.squarefree.com/">Jesse</a>'s <a href="http://www.squarefree.com/shell/">Javascript Shell</a> and packaged it up so I could run it from chrome. It's pretty useful, since it lets you interactively test out javascript expressions and toy with the browser DOM. When I mentioned this to him on IRC, he told me that he had already packaged that along with his <a href="http://www.squarefree.com/jsenv/">Javascript Environment</a> and <a href="http://www.squarefree.com/htmledit/">Real-Time HTML Editor</a> while he was developing <a href="http://www.squarefree.com/extensions/adbar/">adbar</a>. When I mentioned my "Extension Developer Extension" idea, he asked what I would include in it, mentioning a XUL-capable version of HTMLedit, and the ability to show XUL parsing errors as possible features.
So here's my list of things I would find useful in such an extension (most of which are already implemented):
- Javascript Shell: Nothing beats interactive javascript testing
- Javascript Environment: I'm not sold on the usefulness of this, but I guess it'd help me eatch typos/parsing errors without restarting the browser
- a toggle for browser.dom.window.dump.enabled, nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache and javascript.options.showInConsole , since these are all so useful for debugging extensions
- A button/menuitem for reloading all chrome. I think this works now, this would be really nice for overlay development
I'd appreciate any suggestions or ideas that would make the life of an extension developer easier.
-Ted