Alex Rivera | Logout

IDE for Firefox Add-ons Development

Asked 2012-05-29T17:48:57.527
9

I have been working on firefox add-ons for quite a long time and its been a real headache to use notpad++ for development. Is there any suitable IDE or plug-in for eclipse available.And just like we do **Run on Server" for dynamic web-projects,Is there any way that, I do a change in any of the sorce file and it automatically creates the .xpi file and installs in firefox?

eclipse-plugin firefox-addon xul firefox-addon-sdk
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You don't really need IDE to create XPI every time you make a change.

  • Create a folder with your addon's source code (e.g. C://addons/myaddon/).
  • Put a file containing this path to the folder containing your Firefox addons and call it the same as your addon ID (e.g. myaddon@domain.com).
  • In your install.rdf file, add this line: <em:unpack>true</em:unpack>

This way you can just restart the Firefox whenever you want to see the changes. I recommend this addon, it adds a keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+R for quick restart of Firefox (be sure to get the 0.6b2 version, previous versions don't support the keyboard shortcut): https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/file/121516/restart_firefox-0.6b2-fx.xpi?src=dp-btn-devchannel

Also, you will not loose your source code in case you uninstall your addon while testing (this happens when you develop directly in your Firefox addons folder).

As of IDE, for me personally any editor with syntax highlight for XML and JS works just fine. My personal favorites are Aptana (Eclipse based IDE) and Intype (lightweight and extremely fast).

answered 2012-05-30T11:06:09.270

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