First prototype for ThumbTabs (code name)
It was a long time since I started the development of my extension for Firefox. I easily manage to create a sidebar and list all the tabs. But quickly I found my first difficulties…
I searched how to create a thumbnail of a web page. Well, it’s quite easy there is a function for that : drawWindow. But I wanted to creat partial thumbnails, as explained of Alexander Limi article. And playing with ratio, screen width, thumbnail width was quite disappointing. I managed to create partial thumbnail, but only blurred.
Then is decided to create 2 XBL element. One for the tab container and another for the tabs (including the favicon, the title and the thumbnail). Here started the nightmare. I hacked TabSidebar extension to get inspiration but it’s a long process to dive in a project with thousands lines of code.
So, three days ago I give up and decided to test JetPack, by Mozilla Labs. JetPack should represent the future of extensions. It includes the jQuery framework (very handy for animations and events management) and you don’t need to restart the browser after installing jetpacks. However it’s a young plateform, there is a lot of bugs, you cannot localize your strings, there is no mechanisms for preferences handling, etc.
Anyway, I tried it and here it is :
Clearly, it lacks of polish, the code is messy and I have seen a lot of bugs. Moreover it’s broken with JetPack 0.5pre2…
Another screenshot, closer :
I don’t completely abandon the classic extension, but I will wait to finish the JetPack prototype so I will be more trained with JavaScript stuff. I think it’s all a matter of learning curve. JetPack one is more accessible ;)