Monday, February 4, 2008

iGoogleBar: Just because I haven't released a Firefox extension in awhile

iGoogleBar is my latest Firefox extension that adds Google Apps favicons to the Google Apps Bar, using them as triggers for the Apps' respective iGoogle Gadgets. As a courtesy to some of my colleagues, I included their projects in the bar so they’re easier to get to (or just preview) from Gmail and Calendar.

I built this extension using Chickenfoot, which hit version 1.0 recently. Part of that release included improvements to the extension-packaging tool, which made it much easier for me to convert my iGoogleBar prototype into a full-fledged Firefox extension!

The iGoogleBar page acknowledges that there are some missing features from the extension, so I put the source code in the Chickenfoot Scripts Wiki. That means, if you’d like to see a new feature added, please go and update the Wiki instead of just nagging me :) If I like your patch, then I’ll make a new release. And if I don’t like your patch, then you can at least install your modified version of iGoogleBar as a trigger in Chickenfoot.

Will this method of software development actually work? Probably not, but it should be fun to try!