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Mozilla Announces Jetpack, an API For Writing FireFox Adds-On with jQuery, HTML, and CSS

Posted At : May 21, 2009 7:29 AM | Posted By : Brian
Related Categories: RIAs, Miscellaneous, jQuery, JavaScript, CSS
I found out about this last night from a tweet sent out by the jQuery Twitter account (which is probably a good indication that they like the idea).

The subject line pretty much says it all: Jetpack is designed to let current web developers use their existing skills with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and jQuery to build Firefox add-ons/plugins without the need to mess with Firefox's XUL mark-up language. While JavaScript has always been part of the add-on development process, the inclusion of jQuery should make performing certain actions a whole lot easier.

You can learn more about Jetpack via the following URLs:

...the tutorials in the final link give you a good idea of the kinds of things Jetpack will allow you to do: the last example is a Jetpack add-on that will count and display the number of unread e-mails in your Gmail Inbox.

I want to give Jetpack a whirl, but I honestly can't think of any functionality I want to add to Firefox that I can't get from an existing plugin. Anyone have any suggestions for something to try with Jetpack?

It's interesting how web technologies keep being repurposed as a development option in other technologies (Adobe AIR, the upcoming Palm Pre's WebOS, and now Jetpack). Even though I'm not particularly interested in delving into all these different areas, I must say that I like the trend. :)

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Comments
Try building a Jetpack to help manage a CF server or perhaps look at CF logs without having to log into the CF admin page.
# Posted By Rey Bango | 5/21/09 11:57 AM
@Rey: That's an interesting idea, but since I don't have access to any production CF server (save for the developer version on my machines), I'll leave that idea to someone who runs a production server and would have a better feel for what they'd want to see out of such a plugin.
# Posted By Brian Swartzfager | 5/25/09 2:23 PM
@Brian: Well, you can still build it for those that do even if you don't have a need at the moment. The key is to start building something which will invariably demonstrate the possibilities for the technology. :)
# Posted By Rey Bango | 5/26/09 11:06 AM
The information is very useful. Thank you very much!

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# Posted By Anna | 7/10/09 11:27 AM
Jetpack add-on is awesome..


http://www.xspyz.com
# Posted By dim | 11/24/09 7:26 AM
Great post and draw. Thank you for sharing.
# Posted By AYANAMI | 12/23/09 1:02 AM
Try building a Jetpack to help manage a CF server lol. http://filepasswords.com
# Posted By Gilbert | 1/12/10 7:07 PM
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