Tutorials: Developing Firefox Extensions and Commands for Ubiquity

by Sam Dean - Feb. 03, 2009Comments (0)

Mozilla's latest newsletter is out today, and it includes a couple of nice tutorials pertaining to Firefox and Ubiquity (a powerful Firefox extension that I covered here). The first tutorial, from Robert Nyman and found on the Mozilla Add-Ons Blog, delivers step-by-step instructions on how to develop an extension for Firefox. The second tutorial is video-based and shows how to easily build and share commands for the Ubiquity extension.

As I wrote in my post on Ubiquity, this extension has been overhauled recently with a sleeker look and more stable core. As always, it offers a command-line interface within Firefox that can create lots of efficiencies. You can use pre-built commands for things like sending documents on e-mail directly from the browser, or translating to PDF format, or you can write your own commands. The video-based tutorial shows how to create a Ubiquity command that looks up members of U.S. congress by zip code, and it serves as a blueprint for creating any Ubiquity command.

Robert Nyman's tutorial on creating Firefox extensions includes steps for Windows, Mac and Linux users to follow. The example extension he illustrates works with links on a web page, but is detailed enough to show how to create other useful extensions even if you don't have strong development skills. Check these out, and for many more free tutorials on open source topics, see our collection of over 25 resources.