Conquering Firefox 2 developer docs
Tonight I “finished” the last set of developer documentation that needed writing for Firefox 2. While there’s still touch-up work to do, and a couple of samples I’d like to write, the documentation has reached the point at which if we shipped Firefox 2 today, I’d be satisfied with the state of the developer documentation for it.
That’s a pretty good place to be as we approach the beta 2 release.
It means I can use the rest of the time leading up to GM to get the finishing touches put on.
One request: if any themers are reading this, I’d sure appreciate your help on improving documentation about updating themes for Firefox 2. I’ve got a document that basically lists the XUL changes, but if someone with more practical experience would like to write up a how-to guide, I’d really appreciate it (as would the rest of the themers out there).
Also, if you see anything else in the Firefox 2 developer docs that you don’t understand, or think could be explained better, freel free to edit — or, if you’re not comfortable doing the edit yourself, drop me an email or even post a comment on my blog here. I’ve got changes in mind, but I’m sure there’s stuff I haven’t thought of yet.
I think we’re in good shape for Firefox 2 to be the best-documented release yet, and I’d like to thank everyone that helped out, including folks that helped with the writing, but especially the coders that helped me figure a few things out, and the folks in IRC that gave me helpful feedback on layout and the like.
August 31st, 2006 at 7:10 AM
Suggestions:
1. Make “Creating a Microsummary” a subheading of “Microsummaries” (e.g., Heading 2 -> Heading 3)
2. “search suggestions, which appear in a popup box while typing in the search bar.” Change to “dropdown list”.
3. Search engine manager should be Initial Caps? (Search Engine Manager)
Overall, a very nice resource! :-)
BTW: You blog comment fields are near invisible (name & e-mail) on Windows and Firefox trunk 20060830
August 31st, 2006 at 12:34 PM
One more suggestion: nsISessionStore has been significantly extended in bug 344640 – and the Undo Close Tab related methods are also currently missing in the documentation. See http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla1.8/source/browser/components/sessionstore/nsISessionStore.idl#52 for the (supposedly) pretty complete interface.
August 31st, 2006 at 1:04 PM
OK, the docs were complete as of the time I wrote them, but clearly things have come along since then. I’ll work on getting them updated. This is the kind of info that’s especially helpful — I don’t have as much time as I’d like to go back and be sure everything’s still current.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:02 PM
Awesome, once again, THANK YOU Sheppy for all your hard work on this. Seriously this is awesome.
I’d like to write an article on getting ‘in-line’ spellcheck to work in extensions (in chrome). It’s changing rapidly on the trunk, but I have code samples and can write a guide on doing it, and keep it updated until 2.0 is released. Is that something I so do there, or instead on KB.mozillazine.org?
Cheers
-Jed
August 31st, 2006 at 6:46 PM
Please do put it on MDC — I’d suggest doing it at, say:
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Implementing_inline_spellchecking_in_extensions
That’d be fantastic!
September 3rd, 2006 at 3:41 PM
By the way, I’ve updated the session store API docs, so they should be complete now. :)