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Topic: Areas to post free add-ons.

I have made this extension for firefox

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefo … searx-gnu/

Code is hosted at

https://notabug.org/sagaracharya/searx_ … _extension

Little did I realize that Firefox isn't as ethical as it was.

I found these pages for free add-ons

https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Collecti … at_plugins
https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id … uxp_addons

My question is what are some places to submit free add-ons?

Another question which I have is technical wrt code written above. I got some feedback that instead of having a single searx engine, one can find online instances with good security characteristics and choose 1 at random from that list. This will prevent "winner takes all" , spread the load across server and make things more decentralized. I have written some code in the file store_searx.js and with the final temp variable, I want to change the variable search_url in manifest.json when iceweasel starts. Is that possible here in iceweasel-uxp?

2 (edited by zapper 2020-09-30 22:18:16)

Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

XUL has way more usability, so I imagine it shouldn't be too hard to do what you want to do with it.

I will pm Luke about this if I can. smile

But yeah, you can try it. I am sure it will work well. A good rule of thumb is, if it works in webextensions, it should work in XUL too.

Although I think some things work in XUL that don't work in webextensions and vice versa, with more not working on the webext version...

just my two cents.

Btw, besides, Hyperbola's addon place, palemoon/basilisk browser might be another place to post addons like yours, but it must be written in xul completely. Just a heads up!

HyperbolaBSD: The Future of Secure Libre Lightweight Operating Systems!

3

Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

I don't know what XUL is. As I see this on mozilla, this looks deprecated. Is this still used in free communiity? The random instance things is not possible with webextensions. Changing manifest.json entry dynamically is prevented.

Who's Luke? You can find my email id and keys at https://designman.org/ourteam under my name

4 (edited by zapper 2020-10-01 14:10:43)

Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

sagaracharya wrote:

I don't know what XUL is. As I see this on mozilla, this looks deprecated. Is this still used in free communiity? The random instance things is not possible with webextensions. Changing manifest.json entry dynamically is prevented.

Who's Luke? You can find my email id and keys at https://designman.org/ourteam under my name

XUL is deprecated by mozilla yes, but others are continuing this:

https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/UXP

But yeah, you should be able to change manifest.json in UXP which is a continuation of XUL.

Just to be clear, I don't know this for sure, but Luke the Hyperbola developer who works on iceweasel-uxp may know the answer.

HyperbolaBSD: The Future of Secure Libre Lightweight Operating Systems!

5

Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

sagaracharya wrote:

I don't know what XUL is. As I see this on mozilla, this looks deprecated. Is this still used in free communiity?

XUL is the framework that was used for building older Mozilla extensions, before WebExtensions were used.

WebExtensions has a different API than XUL. I recently tried to install on Iceweasel-UXP a very simple extension I wrote using WebExtensions. The extension just blocks small amounts of text. It would not install. basic things, such as the way WebExtensions handles cookies, are different. So you probably won't be able to get a WebExtensions-based extension installed on older versions of Mozilla-based browsers.

XUL is still used, but there probably aren't many people who still use the software (mainly browsers, I think) that XUL-based extensions work for.

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

Can you send me a link to some tutorial on How to make an extension with XUL? It would be great if there is the context of web search. It shouldn't take much time to rewrite it with XUL, I guess. Just the documentation should be great.

zapper wrote:

https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/UXP

Just to be clear, I don't know this for sure, but Luke the Hyperbola developer who works on iceweasel-uxp may know the answer.

Will the XUL based extension work in most of browsers today like IceCat, iceweasel (no uxp) and so on. It would be great if I can spread this even on parabola and other similar OSes. I've mailed Luke.

7 (edited by zapper 2020-10-03 22:21:32)

Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

sagaracharya wrote:

Can you send me a link to some tutorial on How to make an extension with XUL? It would be great if there is the context of web search. It shouldn't take much time to rewrite it with XUL, I guess. Just the documentation should be great.

zapper wrote:

https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/UXP

Just to be clear, I don't know this for sure, but Luke the Hyperbola developer who works on iceweasel-uxp may know the answer.

Will the XUL based extension work in most of browsers today like IceCat, iceweasel (no uxp) and so on. It would be great if I can spread this even on parabola and other similar OSes. I've mailed Luke.

I never made a mozilla extension before, xul or webextension,  so I cannot answer at this time, but I am going to go on utox and see if I can chat with him, I will let you know if I find out more info.

PS, if you use the tox network, you could chat with Luke directly. I don't think it would be a problem if I gave you Luke's tox id.  IF wrong I will let you know.

HyperbolaBSD: The Future of Secure Libre Lightweight Operating Systems!

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

sagaracharya wrote:

Can you send me a link to some tutorial on How to make an extension with XUL?

Look at Mozilla's website.


Will the XUL based extension work in most of browsers today like IceCat, iceweasel (no uxp) and so on. It would be great if I can spread this even on parabola and other similar OSes. I've mailed Luke.

Firefox and the latest version of Icecat require WebExtensions. Just look up the requirements for whichever browser you want to develop for.

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

zapper wrote:

PS, if you use the tox network, you could chat with Luke directly. I don't think it would be a problem if I gave you Luke's tox id.  IF wrong I will let you know.

You have my mail and keys. Send me the id. I use qtox.

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

sagaracharya wrote:
zapper wrote:

PS, if you use the tox network, you could chat with Luke directly. I don't think it would be a problem if I gave you Luke's tox id.  IF wrong I will let you know.

You have my mail and keys. Send me the id. I use qtox.

Sent,

I would hope this doesn't cause any problems.  Just tell him what you told me. when you go to add him. 

Regarding that extension you wanted to port to uxp. smile

HyperbolaBSD: The Future of Secure Libre Lightweight Operating Systems!

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

zapper wrote:

Sent

Send me a normal email. Hyperbola forum email doesn't work. I haven't got anything.

12 (edited by zapper 2020-10-05 23:43:59)

Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

sagaracharya wrote:
zapper wrote:

Sent

Send me a normal email. Hyperbola forum email doesn't work. I haven't got anything.

My bad, I thought it did work aka forum email... sorry.

Can you tell me what your email is?

IF need be, give me a disposable one i suppose.

actually, here is mine:

zapper@dismail.de

HyperbolaBSD: The Future of Secure Libre Lightweight Operating Systems!

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

Unfortunately, we do not support WebExt. We have several reasons for this mentioned on the wiki.

So, as zapper mentioned you'll want to make it XUL compatible. One way to do this would be to create a userscript. GreaseMonkey works in all UXP browsers as well as current Firefox. You can even convert a GreaseMonkey script to an XUL binary with this online tool: https://arantius.com/misc/greasemonkey/script-compiler

I think that would be the easiest solution in this case and saves time of creating the XUL overlay, etc.
I would be happy to test your addon and add it to our wiki if you decide to support UXP. You could also submit it to the PaleMoon Addons, but their repository is not "free software" exclusive.

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

I checked greasemonkey and xul. There's no simple documentation or tutorial for making plugin. I hated both greasemonkey and xul docs.

Firstly I'll need to install iceweasel-uxp on my parabola system. Need help with it. It would be great if it doesn't affect the rest of system.

I'm trying to do it in xul from scratch. There's stuff on writing extensions in xul in a book but not a plugin. Also, xul things I read start from "how to do things in this page" whereas my plugin would be in the background. I'd not like to do anything on the page.

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

So far most of the work I've done with XUL has been porting existing addons (updating deprecated functions in JS, changing GUID in install.rdf, rebranding, etc.).

However for starting from scratch these are two good tutorials:

https://davidwalsh.name/firefox-extension-template
https://robertnyman.com/2009/01/24/how- … extension/

In install.rdf just put in our GUID's to support our applications. You can use the small NoScript-libre.patch for reference. (Bottom part includes addition of Iceape-UXP's GUID, whereas Iceweasel's GUID is the same as FF52's).

Installing Iceweasel-UXP will not affect Parabola's Iceweasel (since they use different directory structure). Although I've not tested it recently, most of our existing PKGBUILD should be adaptable. For reference: https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/packag … weasel-uxp

However, you can also compile it directly from git, which creates a sandboxed tmp directory isolated from the rest of the system. I tend to use this method regularly myself.

It's fairly simple:

pacman -S [all the dependencies, use PKGBUILD as reference]

git clone https://github.com/MoonchildProductions/UXP
cd UXP && mkdir applications
cd applications
git clone https://git.hyperbola.info:50100/software/iceweasel-uxp.git
cd ..
copy over .mozconfig / apply patches as needed ( git am *.patch )
./mach build
./mach run

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Re: Areas to post free add-ons.

Thanks Luke. I'm on it. I tried to install iceweasel-uxp but was unable to. I'll later install hyperbola on a usb stick and install iceweasel-uxp if it is available!

Those 2 links you gave are fantastic and help a lot with structure. Do you have anything on how does the sequence of code execution work in a plugin. Like how do the js and xul files work? I can't figure out how to run a script and store an array at start of iceweasel-uxp session.

I'm changing this addon which I think fits my case best:

https://github.com/tumpio/searchbuttonsbar