14 DAY TRIAL // The last beta of the upcoming Mozilla Add-on SDK for Firefox has been released. Add-on SDK 1.0 beta 5 adds a couple of new APIs, but also some improvements of the existing ones along with bug fixes. The fifth beta is the final one, the stable 1.0 release should be coming in about a month's time.
"The Jetpack team is happy to announce the release of Add-on SDK, version 1.0b5," Mozilla announced.
"This version is the last beta version before the 1.0 release of Mozilla’s downloadable software development kit for building Firefox add-ons. This version includes new APIs, some enhancements, and a great deal of bug fixes and stability improvements," it added.
There are three main new features in Add-on SDK 1.0 beta 5. There's a new Hotkeys API which, as the name implies, enables add-on developers to create keyboard shortcuts for their creations to make it easier for their users to control various functionality.
There are new APIs which enable add-ons built with the SDK to communicate with Content Scripts. The idea is to enable add-on code to communicate with the code on a web page in a simpler fashion and also ensure that this works once Firefox moves entirely to a multi-process architecture.
The latest Add-on SDK also introduces a method for changing widget content on a per-window basis. Smaller changes and fixes are detailed in the release notes.
The Add-on SDK has been in the works for quite some time now, but it is mostly complete at this point. Based on the former Jetpack project, it enables developers to create add-ons for Firefox using just regular web technologies and languages, HTML, JavaScript and so on.
This not only broadens the potential number of developers which can contribute to add-ons, it also comes with several technical advantages, such as no need to restart the browser.
Mozilla Add-ons SDK 1.0b5 is available for download here.