The Flash / ColdFusion Halo Application contest is now closed. Ill post the entries shortly, and will post the winners in the next couple of days.

I have put together a simple class that will make the icon in a XUL StatusBarPanel tag within a FireFox extension blink.

In order for this to work, the StatusBarPanel tag must have its class set to statusbarpanel-menu-iconic.

For example, here is the XUL tag:

<statusbarpanel class="statusbarpanel-menu-iconic" id="my-status" />

and the associated style sheet:

statusbarpanel#my-status[status="on"]
{
    list-style-image: url("chrome://appname/skin/on_status.png");
}

statusbarpanel#my-status[status="off"]
{
   list-style-image: url("chrome://appname/skin/off_status.png");
}

And finally, here is the code to use the class and make the icon blink:

Since I was in the mood of creating FireFox search plugins for sites I search on often, I decided to make a search plugin for engadget. So, here it is:

Install Engadget Search Plugin

Just click the link above, and it will appear in the search bar within FireFox.

Again, sorry for the crumby icon (I obviously have no design sense). If anyone can make a better one, let me know and I will update it.

As I have been learning to develop FireFox extensions, I have found my self repeatedly doing searches over at XULPlanet. So, I decided to create a FireFox search plugin for XUL Planet to make it easier and quick to search the site.

Install XULPlanet FireFox Search Plugin

Just click the link above, and it will appear in the search bar within FireFox. Sorry for the crumby icon. If anyone can make a better one, let me know and I will add it.

Here is a quick tip on how you can create a new tab that opens to a specified URL via a FireFox extension:

var myUrl = "http://www.mikechambers.com";
var tBrowser = document.getElementById("content");
var tab = tBrowser.addTab(myUrl);

Post any improvements and / or tips in the comments.

If you are developing extensions on FireFox on OS X, and are having trouble getting your extension to install or work, you can get some additional debug information from FireFox by starting it from the terminal.

On OS X, you can do that with the following command:

/Applications/firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox

If you need to start the ProfileManager you can do it like so:

/Applications/firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -ProfileManager

Note, you may need to change the path to point to where you installed the FireFox bundle.

Here is another quick FireFox extension tip (which took me forever to figure out). This code snippet shows how to open the About box for your extension from within the extension.

var aboutXULPath = "chrome://extensionname/content/about.xul";
openDialog(aboutXULPath, "", "chrome,modal");

Where aboutXULPath is the path to the about box XUL file specified in the extension’s install.rdf file.

Post any suggestions / tips in the comments

I have been learning how to build FireFox extensions on OS X. Actually doing a build and packaging it to install and test the extension is a little involved (you have to create multiple jar files and and an xpi file). Luckily there are a couple of scripts available that basically automate this process:

• Windows Build Script
• Bash / Linux Build Script

I am running on OS X so I was using the Bash / Linux script. However, this needed a few tweaks to get it to work correctly. Basically, I had to fix some path errors, and also get it to not package the mac .DS_Store folders.

In my never ending quest for a decent code editor on OS X, I have recently installed Eclipse with the ActionScript 2 plugin. I haven’t used it enough yet to have an opinion on it, but I wanted to get some input from other developers.

Have you used Eclipse for ActionScript, Flash or Flex development? If so, what do you think? Are you still using it? Did you like it? What don’t you like? What is missing?

I have been getting a bunch of emails from people telling me they are working on an app for the Flash / ColdFusion Halo 2 application contest, but that they won’t be ready for the deadline on Friday.

So, I have decided to extend the deadline 2 weeks, until Friday December 3.

Btw, I have seen some of the entries and they are awesome. It will be really cool once they are all released.