More specifically, the idea is to allow the user to open Firefox, highlight a word on a web page, right click on it, and have an additional option that, when selected, calls c++ code that does something with the input string (must call C++ code, unfortunately), and displays a dialog box showing the result.
I'm still not sure if in order to implement this functionality I need to create a Firefox plugin or an extension. Can someone point me in the right direction?
Also, if someone can show me sample code in order to get me started that would be appreciated. (XPCOM, which I'm not even sure is what I should be using, seems a bit complicated for this seemingly simple project.)
You need a regular Firefox extension. It can add an item to the context menu, NPAPI plugins cannot do this. When it is clicked it can get the selected text and send it to your binary library. The best way to call functions in this library is js-ctypes, XPCOM is not required.
I need to know when a user refreshs the page and when he switches to another tab.
Does anyone has a clue how to capture this in a firefox extension?
Best regards
Christian
What you seem to want is knowing when the value in the location bar changes. This requires implementing nsIWebProgressListener interface. The only method you really need is onLocationChange, rest of them should be dummies. You can find the documentation along with code examples here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Code_snippets/Progress_Listeners. You can also use progress listeners to monitor page loads.
Some web pages such as GMail and Reddit(with the Reddit Enhancement Suite) have useful keyboard shortcuts that I'd like to use. However, whenever I start typing on one of these pages, the first onkeypress event fires, but then the "Search for text when I start typing" search bar opens and blocks further keys.
I don't want to disable "Search for text when I start typing" as I use it on most other web pages. Is there any way to selectively disable it, or to make a keyboard shortcut/bookmarklet to toggle it?
To disable this in firefox, just go to "Options->General Tab->Browsing and disable "Search for text when I start typing". More info here . This is very useful in some cases, for example when you try to play WebGL games or when using pages like Gmail or Protonmail that have their own kb shortcuts.
UPDATED to version 73.0.1- In previous versions of Firefox this is in "Tools->Options->Advanced->General Tab" or in "Preferences->General->Browsing"
This is still an issue huh? I love this feature but It also bothers me every now and then. There are some pages that get it right. I never dug into how they do it. For instance:
zty.pe - JS browser typing game. Would be pretty bad if typing caused searching here. It actually captures the keys just when the game starts and NOT by default on the page.
That is not Firefox or any other browser feature. To do this, you have to write server and client side code.
Catch text that user types into input, and send it using preferably AJAX to server-side script. Then server side script should look up for matches in DB (some search engine), and return possible combinations. All you have to do on client side (JS) is to show returned results in some nice way - like in google - you can use for example simple html lists, but you have to code some css to make it look properly. Also nice feature is to code JS to work on up/down keys and enter for selecting element (it should also work for mouse).
It's not very simple to do by yourself, but you have now idea how to do it. You could also google for some scripts - surely there is something :)
Good luck!
Is it possible through a plugin or setting or something to allow Firefox to recognize the live DOM source code?
Basically, firebug or other similar tools can recognize elements on the page which Firefox does not.
I understand with these extensions I have the ability to see such changes made by javascript, but Firefox does not seem to fully recognize them.
I'll try to clarify.
If I load a page and view source (ctrl-U), I see what the server sent to Firefox, and what Firefox ostensibly recognizes as the source code of the page. If in that source code, there is javascript which alters the DOM, and then I hit (ctrl-U) again, the code is not updated.
I am using a testing tool (iMacros firefox plugin) to automate functionality, but it does not recognize the updated DOM because Firefox does not. Firebug and similar tools can recognize these "live" updates. Does that help?
http://www.chapter31.com/2006/12/04/viewing-ajax-generated-source-code/
You can try using the web-developer extension with a view-generated-source option.
I'm still not sure I understand your question, but I think what you're getting at is the Web Developer extension for FireFox, specifically its "View Generated Source" feature.
That will let you see the altered DOM.
Firebug gives u this ability:
for instance check the HTML tab when running a jquery ticker and see the dynamic changes live in the DOM
Usually, when I have weird issues with either the console or the DOM inspector with firebug, I find restarting the browser and validating your code is the way forward.
That said, I'm not really following your question, the document that firebug shows is the same one in the firefox window...?
It looks like the problem is not that you want firefox to show the current DOM when you hit CTRL+U, but that you want some automated testing tool to be able to test your web pages.
Perhaps you should use a testing tool that is suited to the job of testing rich web applications, Selenium, for example, can do this.
What Firefox add-ons do you use that are useful for programmers?
I guess it's silly to mention Firebug -- doubt any of us could live without it. Other than that I use the following (only listing dev-related):
Console2: next-generation error console
DOM inspector: as the title might indicate, allows you to browse the DOM
Edit Cookies: change cookies on the fly
Execute JS: ad-hoc Javascript execution
IE Tab: render a page in IE
Inspect This: brings the selected object into the DOM inspector
JSView: display linked javascript and CSS
LORI (Life of Request Info): shows how long it takes to render a page
Measure IT: a popup ruler.
URL Params: shows GET and POST variables
Web Developer: a myriad of tools for the web developer
Here are mine (developer centric):
FireBug - a myriad of productivity enhancing tools, includes javascript debugger, DOM inspector, allows you to edit the CSS/HTML on the fly which is highly valuable for troubleshooing layout and display problems.
Web Developer - again another great developer productivity tool. I mostly use it for quickly validating pages, disabling javascript (yes I disable javascript sometimes, don't you?), viewing cookies, etc.
Tamper Data - lets you tamper with http headers, form values, cookies, etc. prior to posting back to a page, or getting a page. Incredibly valuable for poking and prodding your pages, and seeing how your web app responds when used with slightly malicious intent.
JavaScript Debugger - has a few more features than javascript debugger provided by firebug. Although I must admit, I sparingly use this one since firebug has largely won me over.
Live HTTP Headers - invaluable for troubleshooting, use it frequently. Lets you spy on all HTTP headers communicated back and forth between client and server. It has helped me track down nefarious problems, especially when debugging issues when deploying your web app between environments.
Header Spy - nice addon for the geeky types, shows you the web server and platform a web site runs on in the status bar.
MeasureIt - I don't use this all too frequently, but I've still found it valuable from time to time.
ColorZilla - again, not something I use all that frequently, but when I need it, I need it. Valuable when you want to know a color and you don't want to dig through a CSS file, or open up a graphics editing app to get a color embedded in some image.
Add N Edit Cookies - this has been a great debugging tool in web farms where the load balancer writes a cookie, and uses the cookie value to keep your session "sticky". It allowed me to switch at will between servers to track down problems on specific machine. Also a good tool if you want to try to mess with a site that uses cookies to track your login status/account, and you want to see how your code responds to malformed or hacked info.
Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool - yeah I know what your thinking, lynx, who needs it, its so 1994. But if you are developing a site that needs to take web accessibility into account (meaning accessible to users with visual impairments who use screen readers), or if you need to get a sense of how a web spider/indexer "sees" your site, this tool is invaluable. Granted, you could always just go out and grab Lynx for yourselfhere's the windows xp port that I use.
I've got a handful of other addons that I've used from time to time that I'll just quickly mention: FireFTP (one I installed wasn't stable and I've not tried a newer release), Html Validator (also found this one unstable, least back when I installed like a year ago), IE Tab (I usually just have both IE and FireFox open concurrently, but that is just me, I know many others that find this addon useful).
I'd also recommend the Web Developer extension by Chris Pederick.
As far as web development, especially for javascript, I find Firebug to be invaluable. Web developer toolbar is also very useful.
The ones I have are...
Y-SLow
Live Headers
Firebug
Dom Inspector
One that wasn't mentioned yet is this HTML Validator extension that I found very useful.
#Flávio Amieiro
MeasureIt is an unnecessary extension to have if you install the Web Developer Toolbar. Web Developer Toolbar includes a ruler as one of its features. Under the "Miscellaneous" category for Web Developer click the option "Display Ruler" to use a ruler identical to the MeasureIt one.
That will allow you reduce the number of extensions needed by at least one.
Firefox addons:
FireBug:helps web developers and designers test and inspect front-end code. It provides us with many useful features such as a console panel for logging information, a DOM inspector, detailed information about page elements, and much, much more.
Web Developer-gives you the power disable CSS, edit CSS on the fly, measure certain areas of a page and much more.
ColorZilla
Just click on the icon, hover over the area you'd like to know the hex color for, and click.
Window Resizer
to make sure the layout is displayed properly in the standard resolutions of today.
Total Validator
validating websites much easier by checking HTML, links, CSS and doing a lot more.
Web Developer for web development. Scribefire if you're a blogger-progammer
For web developing I use the Web Developer Toolbar, CSS Viewer and MeasureIt.
But I'm really not one of those who has a thousand of extensions to do everything. I like to keep things simple.
EDIT: Thanks to Dan's answer I don't need MeasureIt anymore. Can't believe I've never seen that! I guess I'll just have to pay more atention to this WebDeveloper toolbar.
Adding to everyones lists, Tamper Data is quite useful, lets you intercept requests and change the data in them.
It can be used to bypass javascript validation and check whether the server side is doing its thing.
I use Web Developer, it's a real time saver.
+1 for LORI ("life-of-request-info"). It's a very convenient alternative for rough measurements of the load time of a particular web page -- the kind of thing that you might otherwise use an external stopwatch for.
New Tab Homepage. Combined with a "speed dial"-type homepage (a personal, fast-loading page of links that you use frequently), helps you get where you're going faster when you open a new browser tab.
LastTab. Changes the behavior of Ctrl+Tab to let you navigate back and forth between your most-recently-used tabs with repeated presses of Ctrl+Tab, the same way that Alt+Tab works in Windows. Also provides a nice view of all open tabs while Ctrl is still being held down for easy navigation. (The resultant behavior is very similar to the Ctrl+Tab behavior in recent releases of Visual Studio.)
FireFTP is good for grabbing/uploading any necessary files.
I find Hackbar to be quite useful. Very useful if you want to edit the querystring part of the url, to test for vulnerabilities, or just general other types of testing where you might end up with complicated query string values.
I was learning DOM inspector, but I've switched to Firebug.
Some of which has been missed above are here
Load Time Analyzer – View detailed graphs of the loading time of web pages in firefox. The graphs display events like page requests, image loading times etc.
Poster – A must have tool for web developers enabling them to interact with web services and other web resources.
Aardvark – A cool extension for web developers and designers, allows them to view CSS attributes, id, class by highlighting page element individually.
Fiddler is a really great debugging proxy. Think of it as a more powerful version of the "Net" panel in Firebug or the Live HTTP headers.
It used to be an IE-only extension, now it also has hooks into Firefox.
Groundspeed, is useful for testing server side code. It was created for input validation tests during pentest, but can be useful for any test that require manipulating input (similar to TamperData).
It lets you control the form elements in the page, you can change their type and other attributes (size, lenght, javascript event handlers, etc). So for example you can change a hidden field or a select to a textbox and then enter any value to test the server response and stuff like that.