Firefox Extension Contest (deadline december 2007) - DC CODING CONTEST TOO

[mouser]

Mozilla is holding an official firefox extension coding contest, and because nothing would make me happier than seeing some DonationCoders enter this contest, we are going to run OUR OWN VERSION OF THIS CONTEST to coincide with the official one.

DC Members who enter the official firefox contest by coding an extension will be considered for a prize from DC, and will get a cool custom rare Cody mug commemorating the contest.

So let's get some DonationCoder presence in this contest!

Extend Firefox² - Contest Details
Will you be the brain behind the next great Web innovation? Do you have the drive to take your Firefox Add-on idea to the masses? Are you ready to affect everyday life for millions of people around the world?

Extend Firefox is a developer contest to encourage development and innovation in Web experience through add-ons to Firefox 2.

This edition of the Extend Firefox contest runs until December 31st, 2007. A panel of judges will award three Grand Prizes and twelve Runner-up Prizes based upon excellence in user experience, innovativeness and use of open standards.

Prizes
Three Grand Prize winners will each receive an Ultimate Firefox Developer Kit, including:

Travel and accomodation to a Mozilla Developer Day of the winner's choice, anywhere in the world
Development gear, including a brand new 15" Macbook Pro with VMware Fusion and ActiveState Komodo
1 Year Unlimited Access subscription to O'Reilly's Safari Library
Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag stuffed with t-shirts, books, stickers, mugs and more
Twelve Runner-Up Prize winners will each receive a Firefox Pack, including:

Firefox Ogio Messenger Bag stuffed with t-shirts, books, stickers, and more
ActiveState Komodo, mug, and t-shirt
A $200 Gift Certificate for O'Reilly Books
All qualified entrants will receive, while supplies last, a Limited Edition Extend Firefox T-Shirt.

http://labs.mozilla.com/contests/extendfirefox/details.php

from http://www.downloadsquad.com/

[mouser]

DC will give out a special custom donationcoder.com Cody mug to the first 5 donationcoder members who enter this contest (whether you win or not).

[mouser]

DC is going to offer a nice big prize to the best firefox extension(s) to come from a DC member! So all you DC coders who have been waiting for an excuse to write a firefox extension, wait no longer!

[Nod5]

sorry, I posted a message here that was meant for this thread: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=10452.new#new
I removed it here now. Mouser: When first browsing different pages on donationcoder forum in Maxthon and then logging in to post in one of them then after passing the authentication I think donationcoder sometimes redirects me back not to the thread I started out in but instead to one of the threads already active in another tab. Could that be due to some error in the donationcoder forum code?

Since I posted in this thread I might as well say something on topic also: I think a firefox plugin mirroring the functionality of the Maxthon 2 feature Text Filter ( http://forum.maxthon.com/index.php?showtopic=62875 ) would be very useful. But maybe it's too complex a project or not doable as a plugin. I'm not yet capable of coding any plugin myself so I'm just voicing an idea here.

[justice]

It's quite interesting because I could come up with good ideas but won't be able to code them. If that's appreciated however I can try and come up with a few gems

Also could you recommend some sort of "getting started guide to developing firefox extensions" and which languages are used? I'll keep following this with a close eye I found some here but obviously quality and differ. Looks like its pretty approachable language wise too.

[justice]

Btw if you want an idea for a DonationCoder related extension:
I'd like to have a Update notifier for "Show new replies to your posts". Because this depends on my login info cookies, it cannot be done via the official Donationcoder update notifier.

However when I'm using firefox I presume an extension could read the cookie as it's part of the browser and therefore make this happen.

[AbteriX]

Extension idea:

Often i want to store the link (URL of a side) only.
I don't want to bookmark it in the browser, i want to have it in my download folder.
(f.ex.: X:\Downloads\useful-stuff\Welcome to useful-stuff home page.URL )
So i go to my download folder, create an new sub folder and drag and drop the link into this new folder.

Idea:
This would be much easier with an "Save as URL" option which
should create an URL-file and show me the "Save as..."-Dialog to store this.

[arunpawar]

Well i have an idea but i'm still not comforable with extensions and dont knoow how they are designed ?aNYONE knows which programming language is used for firefox or extension?

Also for idea: can anyone embed media player classic from k-lite media codec or Windows media player in firefox.Sounds crazy idea but MS did it on taskbar and it is awesome.Whynot do it at Firefox and in even linux too.

[edgecrush3r]

Also for idea: can anyone embed media player classic from k-lite media codec or Windows media player in firefox.Sounds crazy idea but MS did it on taskbar and it is awesome.Whynot do it at Firefox and in even linux too.

This idea has already been done:
https://addons.mozilla.org/nl/firefox/addon/219

Unfortunately not by me either

[mahesh2k]

Another IDEA(please do give me credit if it works or is not included

Integegration of Openoffice file read support in firefox.
- Explaination as IE allows Word file to be open on IE as read only if word is not installed why not? make FF to open the read only support for timebeing OOwriter files.

What you think?

[tinjaw]

I have just spent a few minutes researching what it takes to build a Firefox Extension. In summary, JavaScript and XML knowledge. I suggest you start at the Mozilla Developer Center article Building an Extension.

Oh, almost forgot to mention, if you don't already have it, grab Firebug.

[tranglos]

I have just spent a few minutes researching what it takes to build a Firefox Extension. In summary, JavaScript and XML knowledge.

JS and XML are the easy part, because they're copiously documented eveywhere. Personally, every time I had an idea for an FF extension I was halted by not knowing where and how to hook up the extension to FF internals. If I want to look at cookies, how do I inject my extension into FF's cookie processing mechanism? If I want to do something every time FF does "Save As", where does that procedure go? If there is a beter way than reading through FF source code, I'd love to know what it is!

An extension I really, really want is one that will let me block cookies by domain. FF can only block adserver1.somesite.com, and then I have to click Deny for adserver2, adserver3 ad nauseam. Some sites seem to have hundreds of subdomains, e.g. intellitxt.com. So I want to be able to block all cookies from *.somesite.com, but allow cookies from goodstuff.somesite.com.

There was/is a neat little program called CookiePal that does exactly this, but I'm running too many "resident" apps already, and would rather see this done directly in the browser.

.marek

[Lashiec]

Hmmm, I recall per site preferences ala Opera were being considered for Firefox 3, but I don't know if they made the cut. Beta 1 is out, but I didn't have time to check it.

D'oh! Forget about it, it doesn't have anything to do with what you envision.

[tinjaw]

every time I had an idea for an FF extension I was halted by not knowing where and how to hook up the extension to FF internals.

This is a WAG, but I would imagine you just need to look at the DOM and find the appropriate events to attach to. I'm not sure if in the JavaScript/DOM world they call them 'callbacks' or not, but that would be my guess.

[tranglos]

every time I had an idea for an FF extension I was halted by not knowing where and how to hook up the extension to FF internals.

This is a WAG, but I would imagine you just need to look at the DOM and find the appropriate events to attach to. I'm not sure if in the JavaScript/DOM world they call them 'callbacks' or not, but that would be my guess.

I thought so, but then DOM is only a representation of the document. Nothing there lets you control cookies, read/write FF preference settings or access functions such as Save As. There's a Mozilla DOM reference here:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Gecko_DOM_Reference
but it doesn't help with what I was (once) trying to do.

[mouser]

Does anyone from DC want to give this a try?
I hope we get at least one submission.. if so i'll try to make the present for doing it extra special. 

[cmpm]

I've looked at quite a few extensions, addons, and programs to update all my bookmarks favicons and pages in one step.

The closest I've come is 'Favicon Picker 2', which allows adding your own icons to websites without one. Which is cool.

But here is what I'd like. I'd like to be able to automatically save the websites favicon to a favicon folder that won't get cleaned by cleaning the cache or other places that need cleaning at times.

I want to put a shortcut to a site on my desktop or anywhere with the correct icon and not the default firefox one.

Perhaps a 'rule' like in e-mail programs for certain files.

Although I have heard that some favicons are dangerous and blocked for good reasons. Don't know the reasons but I came across that bit of info somewhere.

Perhaps something like Neodownloader Lite which downloads all graphics from a site. But have it download all favicons from bookmarks and use a folder for choosing the right favicon.

Sheesh...I think I could have said all that with fewer words...lol...