Filed under: Microsoft, Browsers
Wladimir Palant is the developer behind one of the most widely-used Firefox extensions ever: AdBlock Plus. He's also excited about the much-improved code powering Firefox 4's add-on system. In particular, he was intrigued by FF4's support for no-restart extension installs.
Palant wasn't referring to JetPack creations, however, which were always restart-free. According to him, the functionality is available to all Firefox extensions -- so he began investigating how he could bring it to AdBlock. As it turns out, there's quite a bit of work involved.
I'm no developer, but Palant's laundry list of required changes looks like a pretty big task -- especially when you consider that many Firefox extensions are maintained by enthusiasts and developers who code them in their free time. In his own words, "my hack-o-meter exploded and, as you all well know, programming without a functional hack-o-meter isn't safe. So I decided to give up on this whole idea, I probably spent too much time on it already."
Personally, I don't mind restarting Firefox to install a really good extension, and that's a good thing -- because if Palant is right, I'm guessing other developers won't be spending too much time figuring out a way around them.AdBlock dev: no-restart Firefox extensions possible, but a ton of work originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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