Comments on: How to develop a Firefox extension

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:09:38 +0000

Vali,

This is the default view in Mac OS X, but I agree, it can be confusing. However, if you download the sample code, you should get a good grasp of the structure.

By: Vali

Vali — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:58:43 +0000

Hello,

About the pic from section Creating folder structure and files: it looks like chrome.manifest and install.rdf are both in the chrome and default directories respectively.
If you are a newbie this might set you back a while.

Thanks for the solution anyway.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:50:25 +0000

Aaron,

Thanks! But what operating system? In my experience, it has been case-insensitive.

By: Aaron Collegeman

Aaron Collegeman — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 04:03:42 +0000

Hey, so far so good. But it took me a little bit to discover a case-sensitivity issue in the very beginning of your tutorial. When accessing the Profile Manager in MacOS, you must compose the flag “-ProfileManager”, as “-profilemanager” results in an “Unexpected failure” of the application to load. Cheers.

By: Thank you for 2009 – Happy New Year! - Robert's talk

Thank you for 2009 – Happy New Year! - Robert's talk — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:24:14 +0000

[...] that I should give a presentation about developing Firefox extensions (like a live version of my How to develop a Firefox extension article). What he also did was encourage me that I could do it and that I should be brave about it, [...]

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:46:57 +0000

DevJohn,

Hmm, not really sure why. But using C:\extensions is just an example location, so you can have it anywhere on your machine.

By: DevJohn

DevJohn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:28:55 +0000

Doh! Of course, “dozed” should have been “dozen”.

By: DevJohn

DevJohn — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:45 +0000

I tried two tutorials and couldn’t get either to install. Both yours and another used the pointer file method to C:\extensions . After checking the spelling a dozed times, I finally had the idea to grab the entire tutorial directory structure of each tutorial and move them to the extensions folder in my development profile. Both tutorials installed immediately! Have you ever seen this problem before?

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:25:04 +0000

Ureka,

Glad that it was of use!

By: Ureka

Ureka — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:43:42 +0000

Thank you so much Robert.
It was really helpful me to have an idea of how to do my project.
I also faced the problem on installing it. But after I see the comments I could correct it.
Thanks for the nice job done.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:14:35 +0000

katador, Interesting question! Unfortunately, I don't know. Please try asking in the extensions discussion group.

By: katador

katador — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:34:25 +0000

Hi Robert,

Very good article. You know how can save a extension password (like gmanager or any mail checker) but doesn’t appear on about:config?? i create an prefwindow with a password field, but this appear on about:config!!!

Any idea or help!??!?!?

Best Regards!!

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:15:04 +0000

qbsmd,

If my example extension works, feel free to use it as a base to then build your extension on.

Good luck!

By: qbsmd

qbsmd — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:54:12 +0000

That allowed the extension to install, but it doesn’t run. It displays the statusbar icon, and allows me to change the autorun checkbox.

The next difference is the ; after chrome://global/content/customizeToolbar.xul in chrome.manifest, which is absent in the code that works.

By: qbsmd

qbsmd — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:44:51 +0000

I’m not able to install the version of this addon that I made following this tutorial, while your version will install.
I’m in the process of debugging; the first difference I found is that your code above has <;/em:homepageURL> and <;/em:optionsURL>
while the code in your xpi file has and .

Sorry about the previous post; it looked okay in the preview.

By: qbsmd

qbsmd — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:42:43 +0000

I’m not able to install the version of this addon that I made following this tutorial, while your version will install.
I’m in the process of debugging; the first difference I found is that your code above has and
while the code in your xpi file has </em:homepageURL> and </em:optionsURL>.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:23:17 +0000

Hari,

Great that it worked out!

By: Hari

Hari — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 08:31:04 +0000

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your help actually i zipped the folder along with the myextension folder name , so firefox can’t able to find the install.rdf file which is present under the myextension folder.Now i zipped the files under myextension folder and tried,this time its worked.

Thanks for you help for such a nice tutorial.

Regards,
Hari

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:13:12 +0000

Hari,

From what I know about that error, if you have coded the extension like my sample code above, is that you probably have the wrong version number for Firefox.

If that’s not it, I have no idea.

By: Hari

Hari — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:28:24 +0000

hi robert your article is very clear and easy to understand.But when is drag and drop the xpi file its throwing Install script not found:204 error. Can you help me regarding this.Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Hari