MozillaZine

Mozilla Firebird with DOM Inspector Build

Tuesday May 27th, 2003

alanjstr wrote in to tell us that aebrahim has made a Mozilla Firebird build that includes the DOM Inspector, one of the most popular Mozilla Web development tools (it's already included in the Mozilla Application Suite). More details are available in aebrahim's posting to the Firebird Builds forum.

Update! To clarify, this is a Windows build.

Another Update! alanjstr wrote in again to tell us that mal_green has made an extension that adds the DOM Inspector to an existing Firebird installation, placing an item under the Tools menu. If you want a toolbar button, you can install Joe Hewitt's mozEngineer (note that this can cause toolbar button weirdness with some themes) in addition to the DOM Inspector extension. If you just want to install a single XPI, Sailfish has created an extension that adds both the DOM Inspector and mozEngineer to a Firebird build. Read the complete forum topic for more information.

Another Update! alanjstr wrote in for a third time to inform us that iarnell has made a Linux Firebird build with the DOM Inspector. It was compiled on Red Hat Linux 9 with XFT.

#1 Which OS?

by Yama

Wednesday May 28th, 2003 12:57 AM

It would help if you stated which OS this build is for. If you said "aebrahim has made a Windows Mozilla Firebird build" then a lot of us wouldn't have to waste our time clicking on the link to see if we can use it.

#2 Re: Which OS?

by harsk

Wednesday May 28th, 2003 5:20 AM

Yama:

If you had of hovered your mouse's pointer over the link in the article, you would have discovered the build's OS (via the link's title attribute) without having to follow the link.

#5 Re: Which OS?

by AlexBishop

Wednesday May 28th, 2003 8:33 AM

Sorry, I forgot. Dock my wages.

Alex

#3 Won't this ultimately be a plug-in? EOM

by unclebob

Wednesday May 28th, 2003 6:57 AM

.

#4 Re: Won't this ultimately be a plug-in? EOM

by IsoSchi

Wednesday May 28th, 2003 7:17 AM

An Add-on as opposed to a Plug-in, but yes, that does seem to be where it's headed.

Martin

#6 Re: Won't this ultimately be a plug-in? EOM

by cgonyea

Wednesday May 28th, 2003 9:07 AM

Most likely this is a temporary solution for those who use Mozilla but wouldn't change to Firebird without DOM Inspector.

#7 Still only Win32

by alanjstr

Wednesday May 28th, 2003 6:47 PM

Just an FYI that these are all on the same thread and the XPI's are for Windows.

#8 Re: Still only Win32

by brokenvoice

Thursday May 29th, 2003 5:24 AM

<annoyed> And I was under the impression that XPI stood for 'Cross Platform Install'. </annoyed>

#9 This was a "hack"

by alanjstr

Thursday May 29th, 2003 7:10 AM

This was a hack that includes Microsoft Visual C++ DLLs.

#10 Re: Re: Still only Win32

by asa

Thursday May 29th, 2003 9:06 AM

"<annoyed> And I was under the impression that XPI stood for 'Cross Platform Install'. </annoyed>"

XPI stands for cross platform installer. It is Mozilla's cross platform mechanism/APIs for performing installs. That doesn't mean that the thing which is being installed is necessarily cross-platform or even that something is being installed. I could use XPI to remove or rename a file on your hard drive or I could use it to unpackage and execute some platform specific binary or I could use it to install and register with Mozilla some new chrome. It's just an install mechanism and says very little about the content being installed.

--Asa

#11 This was a "hack"

by alanjstr

Thursday May 29th, 2003 9:31 AM

Can XPI detect which platform it is running on?

#12 Re: This was a "hack"

by asa

Thursday May 29th, 2003 12:58 PM

"Can XPI detect which platform it is running on?"

I'm not a developer and I've never created an XPI so I don't know. http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2001/xpinstall/1.0/xpinstal.html has lots of info on XPInstall. Perhaps you could use one of the platform specific methods (like getWinRegistry or gestalt) to test for windows or mac and assume *nix if you get null back? I'm making wild guesses/speculation and I really have no idea but there's surely a way.

--Asa

#13 Re: Re: This was a "hack"

by asa

Thursday May 29th, 2003 1:28 PM

actually, that seems longwinded. why not just ask for the browser user agent which includes OS.

--Asa

#14 Re: Re: Re: This was a "hack"

by asa

Thursday May 29th, 2003 1:49 PM

Someone who knows what he's talking about said this:

He can do a cancelInstall if he doesn't detect windows. Like this: platformNode = getPlatform(); if platformNode != "win" cancelInstall He should look at the jst files in xpinstall/packager for examples of using cancelInstall and getPlatform

#16 Why does it take so long

by alanjstr

Friday May 30th, 2003 10:08 PM

Done.

#15 Re: Re: Re: Still only Win32

by brokenvoice

Friday May 30th, 2003 2:17 AM

Sorry Asa, but according to the documentation on Mozilla.org, you are wrong. (see: http://www.mozilla.org/catalog/architecture/xpinstall/ ). Here it talks about XPInstall , not XPInstaller and it even says "...XPI Installer..." near the bottom of the page which would translate to "Cross Platform Installer Installer"? Doubtful.