[Gllug] Two Questions

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 11:19:07PM +0000, Peter Childs wrote:
> Two Questions,
> 
> 1. How do I write a mozilla plug in and don't point me at mozilla web 
> site its useless, Very badly structured and they don't even seam to have 
> any mailing lists only forums that are months old and I never know where 
> to start whats new whats old etc etc. I want to extend Thunderbird but 
> there extension howto don't tell me where to start. (Maybe a gllug 
> meeting might help)

No one's answered your first question yet, so I'll have a go.

There are two types of plugins that one can write for Mozilla.  The
first, called a "plug-in", is a native binary (.so file) which is
linked into the browser at run time and controls a rectangular area
inside the browser document.  Common examples are the Flash and
Realplayer plugins.  The second type is called an "extension", and
it's XUL + Javascript which allows you to extend the browser in
radical ways (such as adding functionality into the menus).

For plug-ins, there's a well-defined API which dates back to the
Netscape days. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/

For extensions, you really need to buy the book "Rapid Application
Development with Mozilla" by Nigel McFarlane.  (Avoid the O'Reilly
Mozilla book at all costs!)

As far as I'm aware, there's no documentation available which
specifically covers writing extensions for Firefox or Thunderbird, but
the book above will give you a general background in the issues.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com
Team Notepad - intranets and extranets for business - http://team-notepad.com
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