The new Add-ons Builder from Mozilla Labs has become a must-have tool for me when I’m writing documentation for Gecko and Firefox. In the past, when I needed to try things out before writing documentation for a new API, I would have to write up an extension, install it, debug it (with the repeated Firefox relaunches that entails), then finally write my documentation.
With the Add-ons Builder, I can write sample or test code in-browser, debug it in place without any restarts, and write my documentation — all at the same time. No more writing an entire extension to test two lines of code. I just drop them into the Add-ons Builder and go.
The amount of time this has saved is huge. Even better, my simplest code snippets are getting tested much more often. In the past, I rarely bothered to test one-liners, but now even those get a quick trial run.
So, a huge thumbs-up and thank you to everyone responsible for creating this tool. I’m your number one fan!
2 Responses to “Documentation in the age of the Add-ons Builder”
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I feel obligated to point out that testing short snippets of code was possible for a long time (and is actually easier than with the AOB) with the Extension Developer’s Extension.
I have never heard of that. Interesting.