~robcee/ » Web

WikifyTabs

robcee — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:40:57 +0000

This weekend I took a bit of time out of my busy schedule of barbecuing and hiking among the rocks to write a little extension. A visiting friend asked if there was an easy way to get a list of the currently open tabs to enter in a wiki page. I tried various “bookmark all tabs” and export options but nothing seemed to fit the bill.

Enter WikifyTabs! It does just what we were looking for, creates a blank page and dumps the currently open tabs into it in MediaWiki markup. Pretty simple, but kind of useful. It also fits in with some of the ongoing discussion on Planet right now about how to improve the display and access of tabs. (Aside: I still love ctrl-tab, even though it might get changed before the final version of Firefox 3.1). Imagine a similar list of tabs with functional links in an about:tabs page. I may add that to the extension. Other possible additions include options to produce different types of code or markup, context menus in text areas to insert directly and copying wikified or bbcode links directly from the tab bar to the clipboard.

Oh, and I used Firebug 1.2.0 to help debug my extension. It was finished up by John Barton, Jan Odvarko and a cast of … several others this weekend. We released the final version yesterday and updates should be available through AMO. If you run into any problems, please file an issue on the google code page.

(I would be remiss in not sending special thanks to JOEDREW!, dria, gavin and yes, even kev for helpful grammar debugging of my early morning post)

The Correct Term is “Firebuggist”

robcee — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:00:53 +0000

After the Firefox 3 Release Week excitement, I kind of zoned-out for a bit and forgot about my blog. In an attempt to re-invigorate it, I’ve updated the theme to something a little less “newspapery” and should be able to get it looking a bit better than it did out of the box. It’s a work in progress and some things still don’t look quite right, but I have Firebug to help me fiddle with the CSS and layout. Nixing all instances of “Arial” was a good place to start. Also, while I’m rambling on about my blog, I should mention that WordPress 2.6 is out and if you’re using that platform, you should really update. Trust me, it’s nice.

Speaking of Firebug, it looks like I’ll have plenty of opportunity to play with it now as I’m going to be helping out with that project full-time. I’m really excited to be working on development tools again and already have a few ideas for features or extensions. (Internet-famous) John Resig posted a great article a couple of weeks ago and I’m looking forward to working with him, Jan Odvarko and the Firebug team to make it the awesomest, standards-based web-development tool in the universe. I’m hoping to write another post in a few days about some of those ideas. In the meantime, I have a couple of little patches to finish up before completing the move.

From an organizational perspective, this means I’ll be moving into the Evangelism Team with Mike Shaver and friends. I’ll still be helping field questions about the unittest infrastructure if they come up, but inquiries and bug reports should go to John O’Duinn and his team of Excellent Release Engineers.

Thanks to everyone for making this shift possible and to everyone who sent congratulatory notes. Everyone is Awesome!

Add-ons I can’t roll without

robcee — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:20:15 +0000

Deb posted an excellent run-down the other day about 20 top-notch add-ons ready for Firefox 3. I thought I’d do a quick write-up about a few of the add-ons I find invaluable too (and more-or-less ready for Firefox 3.0). Note that there may be some overlap here and that some of these add-ons are considered to be “beta” versions and come with all the warranties that term implies. Without further a-do, I present the add-ons!

Scribefire

This post is written in it. Over the past few weeks I’ve been using this blogging extension more and more often. It’s been getting updated frequently as Firefox has shuffled through the beta cycle and feels ready to go now that they’re up to version 2.2.5. It also includes a number of other useful features including some features like the award-winning Share-o-holic for posting pages to Digg, Reddit and Magnolia, to name a few. The best part of Scribefire is that it keeps my blogging right in my webbrowser. This feels right to me.

Twitterfox

My favorite way to twitter (when twitter is working)*.

Delicious

At long last, the del.icio.us add-on has been released for Firefox 3. It’s still in beta, but I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and feel that it’s an integral part of my browser.

eBay Companion

Hardcore eBay addicts will appreciate this. It lets you keep an eye on your watched items and provides a little extra security when logging into an eBay or Paypal site. It has helped me acquire many tiki mugs this weekend at some expense. I considered that “doing my part for Firefox 3″.

Lastly, I’ll mention a few quickies that I really like. It’s time for…

Robcee’s Add-ons Honor Roll!

Fission – progress bar in the title bar. Safari-style.
QuickRestart – restart your browser. Quickly!.
CustomizeGoogle – modify how you work with Google. Force https connections for mail, etc.
Adblock Plus – ads were 10 years ago.

Technorati Tags: firefox, add-ons, extensions, mozilla