The Addon Ecosystem

• Back-story of an addon
• Browser-Addon relationship
• Who should, ideally, develop Firefox addons
• Comparison with other browsers' addon implementations

Diving into Firefox Addon-Development

• Know your basics
• Figure out what's lacking
• Search if there's already something similar
• Resolve the use cases (is it rather a webapp/service, than extending the broswer?)
• Make crude & rapid prototypes without fancy features, stick to the bare minimum till you get the result

Getting in-development helps & references

• MDN Add-on Docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/addons


• ExtDev IRC Channel: irc://irc.mozilla.org/#extdev


• Other Developers: who have solved similar issue in another addon

Addon publishing & its life-cycle

• You can distribute your addons from anywhere (i.e. your website)


• But publishing in AMO is probably a better option, for several reasons


• Though, sometimes it's not a good idea (security review false positive etc.)

Guides, Notes, Tips, and Good practices

• Write that code from scratch again, you can do better
• Most #extdev are from Europe/US — adjust timing for QnA
• In IRC, don't ask "anybody there?" — ask the question
• When submitting addons provide all required details to use the addon in the note for the reviewer section

Questions?

Get these slides live at:
http://debloper.github.com/talks/GearingUpAddons

Fork my GitHub repos @Debloper
Or, follow me on Twitter @Debloper

Thanks!