From: Simon Wistow
Date: 12:29 on 30 Mar 2005
Subject: mozilla extensions
Well, that's a hate from the get go - Firefox, Phoenix, Mozilla. Watch
the pea!
That aside, fuck me developing extensions for, err, let's call it
Firefox is a pain in the testicular area. This is a typical work cycle.
1. Create directory structure.
2. Populate with meta data files that duplicate large quanities of
information.
3. Start trying to code.
4. zip up various directories, some as .jars
5. zip up more directories plus those .jars as a .xpi
6. Load in Firefox
7. Wait.
8. Just 5 seconds.
9. Only 4 to go now.
...
13. Now restart Firefox. What the fuck? These aren't device drivers.
14. Get an error, try and work out the mapping betwen then internal
error string and what it actually wants.
15. Goto 4.
16. Kill oneself or Ben Goodger.
Debugging is ... well, a pain in the arse. There's no build tools.
There's no docs. The API is different between point releases of browser
versions. JOY!
Worst. Dev. Environment. EVAR!
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 12:53 on 30 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:29:05 +0100, Simon Wistow <simon@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > Well, that's a hate from the get go - Firefox, Phoenix, Mozilla. Watch > the pea! > > That aside, fuck me developing extensions for, err, let's call it > Firefox is a pain in the testicular area. This is a typical work cycle. Bunch of useful tips here... http://kb.mozillazine.org/Extension_development#Getting_started ... which, while not bringing Mozilloid development anywhere near "nice", at least bite off a chunk of the hatefulness wrt testing, building and reloading. -- Yoz
From: Paul Holden Date: 19:23 on 30 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions On 2005-03-30 03:29, Simon Wistow wrote: > Well, that's a hate from the get go - Firefox, Phoenix, Mozilla. > Watch the pea! What I truly love about Firefox is the program/extension update feature. It's great, let's you know what needs to be updated and without any hassle, you can just download and install. Except when it comes to updating Firefox itself. The update works fine. But the release notes for each version of Firefox always warn you not to install one version on top of another. Does the handy update tool uninstall Firefox before continuing? No. Does it apply a patch to make this unnecessary? No. By the time I noticed what was going on I had about four versions of Firefox listed in "Add/Remove Programs" and the install was so botched that I couldn't properly navigate through the options menu. Awesome. Paul
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 21:52 on 30 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions > What I truly love about Firefox is the program/extension update feature. > It's great, let's you know what needs to be updated and without any > hassle, you can just download and install. Except when it comes to > updating Firefox itself. I just drag and drop Firefox on top of the old version. Always works for me. That brings me to the next bitch, installers. If we had properly designed systems the only time you'd EVER need an installer is to replace core OS components. OS X isn't quite that good, but it's close, SO WHY DO PEOPLE STILL WRITE INSTALLERS? ARE THEY STUPID?
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 22:11 on 30 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 02:52:19PM -0600, Peter da Silva wrote: > That brings me to the next bitch, installers. If we had properly designed > systems the only time you'd EVER need an installer is to replace core OS > components. OS X isn't quite that good, but it's close, SO WHY DO PEOPLE > STILL WRITE INSTALLERS? ARE THEY STUPID? Yes, Peter. Yes they are.
From: Paul Mison Date: 12:19 on 31 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: installers (was: mozilla extensions) On 30/03/2005 at 14:52 -0600, Peter da Silva wrote: >That brings me to the next bitch, installers. If we had properly designed >systems the only time you'd EVER need an installer is to replace core OS >components. OS X isn't quite that good, but it's close, SO WHY DO PEOPLE >STILL WRITE INSTALLERS? ARE THEY STUPID? At least if you have to use an installer, use the one built into the system, not a crappy one from the 90s that's been half-heartedly Carbonized (what a horrible word that is) and which doesn't allow you to see what's going on (since at least with a .pkg Pacifist or unpkg let you see if it's really necessary to have files dumped over your system). Ooh, especially if you mess up the top level of the drive with pointless logs (hey! look! there's a log folder hidden in the user folder! Try putting things there instead!) http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq_topic/log.html
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 17:06 on 31 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: installers (was: mozilla extensions) > http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq_topic/log.html Holy hell, and Office is one of the well-behaved apps that doesn't need an installer. I guess they decided that was against the Microsoft Credo so they had to get you one way or the other.
From: Chris Devers Date: 14:07 on 31 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Peter da Silva wrote: > That brings me to the next bitch, installers. If we had properly > designed systems the only time you'd EVER need an installer is to > replace core OS components. OS X isn't quite that good, but it's > close, SO WHY DO PEOPLE STILL WRITE INSTALLERS? ARE THEY STUPID? Charmingly, OS X mostly gets around the need for installers, lots of things are just drag & drop. But if you want to remove the program, it isn't enough to just drag the application to the trash, because in many cases it will have deposited random files under ~/Library and /Library. Moreover, there's little rhyme or reason as to where things get added, and no tools (that I've been able to find) that help clean things out.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 17:14 on 31 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions > Charmingly, OS X mostly gets around the need for installers, lots of > things are just drag & drop. But if you want to remove the program, it > isn't enough to just drag the application to the trash, because in many > cases it will have deposited random files under ~/Library and /Library. Right... it's much better to drop them in ~/.obscurename/gibberish. No, wait, I have a better idea. Let's make the first version put the files in ~/.application, then the next in ~/.dt/application with extra files in ~/AppDefaults, then in the next version we'll add stuff in ~/.ttdb and edit ~/.XDefaults and screw it up by forgetting that http:// needs to be quoted because XDefaults gets parsed by cpp and cpp thinks // is a comment delimiter... Irritating as it may be, it's less hateful than the alternative.
From: Chris Devers Date: 17:22 on 31 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Peter da Silva wrote: > > Charmingly, OS X mostly gets around the need for installers, lots of > > things are just drag & drop. But if you want to remove the program, > > it isn't enough to just drag the application to the trash, because > > in many cases it will have deposited random files under ~/Library > > and /Library. > > Right... it's much better to drop them in ~/.obscurename/gibberish. But that's the thing -- things aren't just deposited under ~/Library, because ~/Library (and /Library, and /System/Library) is (are) a whole hierarchy of places to hide things. Maybe this app put junk under ~/Library/Preferences. Maybe this one added stuff under /Library/Application\ Support. Maybe this naughty one poked in /System/Library/Frameworks. Who knows? At least with your examples, everything is restricted to your home directory. With this situation, who knows where things end up. If the application is behaved, it'll restrict itself to your home directory or the system-wide /Library tree, but they don't all do that -- some things decide to squirrel away mysterious drivers in the /System tree, which is pretty much guaranteed to break the next time you update the system. It may be "less" hateful, but that isn't saying very much.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 18:28 on 31 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions > > Right... it's much better to drop them in ~/.obscurename/gibberish. > But that's the thing -- things aren't just deposited under ~/Library, > because ~/Library (and /Library, and /System/Library) is (are) a whole > hierarchy of places to hide things. > Maybe this app put junk under ~/Library/Preferences. ~/.application > Maybe this one added stuff under /Library/Application\ Support. /usr/local/share/application > Maybe this naughty one poked in /System/Library/Frameworks. /usr/local/lib/application, /usr/local/share/application, /usr/local/man/man*/allkindsastuff, ... > At least with your examples, everything is restricted to your home > directory. When you start talking about frameworks, no way are the equivalents restricted to your home directory. > With this situation, who knows where things end up. If the > application is behaved, it'll restrict itself to your home directory or > the system-wide /Library tree, but they don't all do that -- some things > decide to squirrel away mysterious drivers in the /System tree, which is > pretty much guaranteed to break the next time you update the system. Applications that do "drag-and-drop" install do that? How do they get write access? > It may be "less" hateful, but that isn't saying very much. I think you're talking about different applications than I am.
From: Earle Martin Date: 21:02 on 01 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 08:07:43AM -0500, Chris Devers wrote: > Charmingly, OS X mostly gets around the need for installers, lots of > things are just drag & drop. But if you want to remove the program, it > isn't enough to just drag the application to the trash, because in many > cases it will have deposited random files under ~/Library and /Library. > Moreover, there's little rhyme or reason as to where things get added, > and no tools (that I've been able to find) that help clean things out. To think, that in the old days pretty much every app would put its files in Macintosh HD:System Folder:Preferences (and possibly Extensions and/or Control Panels if it required a driver of some kind) and er... that was it. Oh, occasionally you'd come across a badly-written app that would want to create its own preferences folder in the System Folder, but that was rare. Uninstalling was a snap. Isn't software supposed to get easier to use?
From: sabrina downard Date: 01:46 on 02 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: mozilla extensions : Isn't software supposed to get easier to use? But it's so much *shinier* now! still hating, --s
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