Archive for April, 2006

I’ve just finished posting the revised article on adding preferences to an extension, and the source code is being uploaded as I write this post. The revised sample does things more intelligently and is a little easier to follow, and the article is much longer with a lot more detail.

Now it’s back to work on the localization sample and the corresponding article.

Adding preferences to an extension - MDC

The Creating a dynamic status bar extension sample and article have been revised to fit in better with the later samples in the series.

I’m working on redoing the next article now — the one on adding preferences and a popup menu to the extension. After that, I can finish up the localization article.

It’s been a good educational process, I’ll tell you that.

This is a new word I’ve invented. Here’s the definition:

connegativity (n.) A state of unreliable Internet connectivity.

My cable modem has been going on and offline every few minutes all day, and for some reason, my Treo is refusing to keep a connection for even that long for some reason.

The symptoms really make me suspect that this is once again related to Charter’s ongoing and very distruptive upgrading of their network to support cable telephony. But I’m going to give them a call here in a minute to confirm it.

Anyway, I’m trying to work on redoing the stock watcher samples to be more consistent with the later versions, by making them use objects. Of course, it’s tricky to test the code when your cable modem is alternately up and down.

Once I get that retwiddling done, I can finish up my localization sample, which is mostly finished, except it needs to incorporate a few improvements I came up with while reworking the previous samples.

Our dog, Dexy, needs a new home. She’s a sweet dog, but likes to roughhouse, so we’re not thrilled having her in the same house with our daughter.

The problem is this: Dexy has allergies, and needs regular shots to keep them under control, or she winds up with nasty rashes. That means finding her a new home is really hard to do.

Even once we do give her up, I’ll miss her; she sits on my feet while I work, and naps with me on the couch that’s a few feet from my desk when I need to relax.

I’m not sure what to do with her. Regardless, I’ll miss her when she’s gone.

This is one of those mornings where it’s hard to focus on getting anything accomplished. My daughter, Sophie, woke up early today, crying. Since I take the “first shift” with the baby each day, I got up and changed and fed her, and played with her for a while, but now I’ve been up a lot longer than I normally would be by this time of day — after not sleeping very well in the first place — and am already tired.

Ah, the joys of living with a baby in the house.

I’ve posted my new sample, Adding preferences to an extension to MDC. It includes a downloadable sample. This new example demonstrates how to add a preference dialog to an extension, as well as how to create and handle events for a popup menu.

Feel free to let me know if there’s anything that needs work. Or, you know, you could tweak the article itself. If the code needs fixing, let me know so I can get the downloadable sample fixed.

I’m just about done with the third sample I’ve been working on; it’s all working nicely — I think — but the stock market closed, which makes it hard to be absolutely sure everything’s working right. Imagine my frustration trying to debug why my code was never refreshing the stock value as I worked past the close of the market.
I updated the most recent sample this morning, but have another update that needs to be done — however, I’m hanging onto that until the morning for the same reason; I want to confirm it works when the market’s actually seeing some action.

The next sample (the third one, which I’m working on now) adds a menu to the status bar panel that lets you pick among several stocks to watch, and adds a preference window for configuring a stock to watch that’s not on that list.

After that, I’ll be doing a sample that covers how to localize the extension.

One of my duties at Mozilla is to help the people that know stuff (meaning, “the people that write all that code”) explain to everyone else how to take advantage of all that hard work. In other words, if you’ve got something you think should be documented, but you’re not the world’s greatest writer, I’m here to help.

If you’re a wizard about some bit of technology that needs to be documented on MDC, please don’t hesitate to enlist my help! Feel free to write up something and send it along to me for polishing up, or to ask for my help with any writing that needs to be done. That’s what I’m here for.

I don’t know everything that needs writing up yet, so I’d appreciate the help!

I tried yesterday’s new beta of Parallels on my iMac Core Duo last night, and as soon as I hit the button to start the virtual machine, my system panicked. Not exactly confidence-inspiring. I may wait for another update or two before I try it again. I really would rather use it than Boot Camp under normal circumstances, since rebooting sucks.

I ordered a book on SOAP programming in Perl today via Amazon. I’ve needed one for a while, since I have a few side projects I want to do that I’d like to implement using SOAP, which at present I know only a tiny, tiny little bit about. Sounds like a very cool technology that I can do a lot of stuff with once I know my way around it.

And in the “interesting unplanned use of technology” department, there’s a program for the MacBook Pro now called iAlertU, which uses the sudden motion sensor to detect if someone is moving the computer, and activates an alarm if you do. This isn’t new; it’s been done before for certain earlier PowerBooks. What is new is that you can use your Apple Remote to toggle the alarm on and off; if you have the remote paired, only your own remote should be able to successfully turn the alarm on and off. It doesn’t even matter to me if it’s useful or not; that’s just an awesome hack.

I spent today working on my third sample for extension programmers. The new one expands upon the previous sample by adding a popup menu to the status bar and adding a preference window as well as a configurable setting; you can now configure which stock you want to monitor.

That code is mostly done, with a couple of UI improvements to do before I’m happy with it. Then I can write the accompanying article.

Not sure yet precisely what I’ll be doing next, although I’m leaning toward doing some interesting experimentation to see if I can make XUL do some cool tricks.

Over the next few days, I have to come up with a plan for what all I intend to do for the next few weeks. Hopefully my next couple of days worth of experimentation will give me some good ideas for how to proceed from there.