Why app-global extensions are essentially broken · 2010-08-18 09:44 by Wladimir Palant
Should I rather title this blog post “App-global extensions considered harmful”? I hope not because I see some valid use cases for installing an extension in a central location where it will be taken over regardless of the profile used. However, the current implementation in XULRunner/Firefox has some very nasty side-effects which make using this mechanism a bad choice. And there are apparently many people making the same experience.
How about making extension compatibility updates less annoying? · 2010-08-15 17:06 by Wladimir Palant
I came back from a vacation today and found around 20 mails in my inbox along the lines of “When will Adblock Plus be compatible with Firefox 4.0 Beta 3?” There are probably a dozen more questions in the forum which I didn’t check yet. Now I know of course that Adblock Plus is compatible with Firefox 4.0 Beta 3 because lots of people (yours truly included) regularly use Adblock Plus in nightly builds. So all I had to do was to log into AMO and change the compatibility info for Adblock Plus.
XULRunner in large projects, part 4: Localization pitfalls · 2010-07-16 23:41 by Wladimir Palant
I am back from the Mozilla Summit and somewhat managed to process all the new information I got there. But instead of posting yet another summit summary or more summit photos (what, you didn’t know how great this summit was?) I have a far more boring topic for today: localization of XULRunner-based applications.
Adblock Plus roadmap changes - Firefox Sync and Electrolysis · 2010-07-09 01:26 by Wladimir Palant
I had a chance to talk to some Firefox Sync developers at the Mozilla Summit today. The interesting results:
XULRunner in large projects, part 3: Bugs, bugs, and more bugs · 2010-07-05 19:36 by Wladimir Palant
I already mentioned platform bugs in the previous article but this discussion is worth expanding. Fact is, with the XULRunner code base being rather huge you are bound to find bugs and inconsistencies if you only dig a little deeper. Most of them will be minor though some occasionally turn out mission critical.
XULRunner in large projects, part 2: Why XULRunner isn't like Java · 2010-07-04 09:53 by Wladimir Palant
When talking about runtimes people often expect XULRunner to be something like Java. Sometimes people will also mention .NET — if you are one of them feel free to replace the word “Java” but “.NET” everywhere in this article, it shouldn’t affect the meaning in any way. Fact is, XULRunner is very different from Java and I will try to explain why.
XULRunner in large projects, part 1: What is that "XULRunner" thingy, anyway? · 2010-07-02 00:25 by Wladimir Palant
I applied to lead a session on XULRunner in large software projects at the Mozilla Summit. Unfortunately, that proposal was rejected, no talk for me at the summit. Yet there is apparently some interest in the topic, I got messages from two people who won’t be attending the summit asking for slides. I won’t create any slides but I decided to share my thoughts on the topics I wanted to discuss. Having spent the last three years building XULRunner-based applications (first TomTom HOME, now Songbird) I have some experience in this area. Still, this will be necessarily a one-sided view so don’t hesitate to comment.
Impact of Adblock Plus on startup time - revisited · 2010-06-09 23:31 by Wladimir Palant
A few months ago Taras Glek blogged about extensions having a significant impact on browser’s startup time. One of the extensions he measured was Adblock Plus 1.1.3 and it didn’t make a good figure. Originally I thought that significantly optimizing Adblock Plus initialization wasn’t possible but I then found that using lazy evaluation for some values improved the performance of Adblock Plus 1.2 quite significantly. So I decided to check what things look like now.
Status of the Adblock Plus project, spring 2010 · 2010-05-06 19:11 by Wladimir Palant
With Adblock Plus 1.2 being released and many other things going on I felt that it would be useful to give a summary of where we are now and what are the areas that we need to focus on next. I am not sure whether it is something I would publish regularly, maybe.
Ah, that wonderful Flash installation experience... · 2010-04-22 07:57 by Wladimir Palant
Apparently, I am not the only one who noticed that the Flash installation experience has turned from bad to worse. Paul O’Shannessy uses pretty strong language to describe the procedure but I think it is justified. Until recently you could ignore all the bells and whistles and still download the executable which would then install Flash (and only Flash, regardless of the pre-checked crap that you might have forgotten to uncheck). Now you have to install the Adobe DLM extension (never mind that plug-in installation doesn’t usually require a browser restart) and there doesn’t seem to be a way to avoid it. Still wonder why so many people want to see Flash obsoleted by HTML5?