14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has always relied on add-ons to expand Firefox and it's continuing to do so with a couple of new developments, extensions for the mobile Firefox and the brand new Add-on Builder 1.0, a web-based add-on creator and editor.
"After a year in incubation we’re ready to remove the beta tag from the Add-on Builder," Mozilla announced.
"For those of you who are unfamiliar with this fantastic tool, Add-on Builder is an online development environment that allows developers with knowledge of HTML, JavaScipt and CSS to rapidly create add-ons for Firefox using the Mozilla Add-on SDK. You can think of it as the jsFiddle of add-on development and debugging," it explained.
Add-on builder is built on top of the Add-on SDK, which has recently been updated, the set of tools created to enable developers to build new add-ons using web technologies alone, HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
These add-ons are much easier to build than with the old Firefox add-on system, if only because a lot more people already have the basic knowledge to do it.
Add-on Builder is a step further in simplifying the process by providing a full development environment, complete with the editor removing all of the hassle out of creating a new extension.
Anyone that knows a bit of JavaScript and takes time to read some Add-on SDK documentation will be able to create something for Firefox in no time. Making it easier for developers to get started with creating Firefox add-ons means more people will try it.
The fact that they can create extensions that work with the Android version of Firefox, granted only the Nightly and Aurora versions, Firefox 12 and 13, should prove another advantage.
That said, the majority of Firefox add-ons are still based on the old SDK are harder maintain and require a restart when installing.