I love movies 😛 , therefore I’d like to write about a few scenes of movies I love and which inspired me!
Do you remember Marilyn Monroe when sang “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friends”?
Well, girls prefer diamonds but they don’t develop extensions for Mozilla products, or at least girls programming extensions aren’t so much (sob!!)
OK, now I’ll try to be “serious”: I love also Fantastic Four, probably not exactly the same who you love, but they are however special friends with who I’ve built solid friendship during the period of programming extensions (a long time)!
I know some extension developer losses much time to find information that can be easily (???) found using my best friends.
The first I encountered was DOM Inspector.
This one help me to dig inside DOM nodes for chrome (and normal pages!!) in a user friendly way, it simply speedup my XPCOM learning curve.
Many developers simply ignore DOM Inspector value; they should write thousand times on blackboard:
I will use DOM Inspector before ask to anyone
I will use DOM Inspector before ask to anyone
…
My second friend is Mozilla lxr, the source cross reference.
For many years I used “find in files” utilities to browse source code but now I have a hyperlinked way to find snippets of code.
Why lxr is so magic for me?
I can search source code and navigate using links to functions, variables, classes and any type of source code.
Try it and you will discover a new way to study source code for complex applications!
My friend (and I hope your) XUL planet is the well know APIs and tutorials site about XUL.
Nothing to say, writing extensions without xul planet is equivalent to drive a car in dark of the night without lights.
Last but not least: Bugzilla.
Have you never read “In case of emergency, break glass”?
Well in case of emergency Bugzilla is a valuable tool, you can search if someone has already encountered your problem and if it’s a bug or simply your mind is bugged ;-).
Honestly I don’t know how to really use Bugzilla, I’m unable to use the incredible powerful search engine but this is related to my stupidity 🙁 .
Mr. Fantastic: lxr
Invisible Woman: DOM Inspector
The Thing: XUL planet
The Human Torch: Bugzilla
Who are your Mozilla devel best friends?
Tell me so they can became my new best friends 😉