0.1 Release

My 0.1 is a shell of an extension that puts some extra options in some menus so I can easily put the content in later. The picture on the left shows that I have added a spell check option to the tools menus. The picture on the right shows that when you right click a page you can also get the spell check option. This is pretty basic but it took me a while to figure out how to add things to those particular menus.

One thing I know from my 0.1 is that I need to get more involved with the community, I have been doing too much on my own and need to get involved more.

I was fun creating an extension. It gives you some perspective on the things I use in Firefox every day and that they could have been created by someone like me.

While doing my 0.1 I was researching how the spellchecker in Firefox works and I don't really have anything to show for it yet but in my future releases it will be of a great help.

I think that about wraps it up. That is my 0.1 release.

Extension

Finally got my first extension working.

It was pretty easy all things considered. I had spent time trying to figure out what my end product should be but I didn't get started at the beginning until now. So far it doesn't do anything but I'm happy that I made all the files and everything works. Mozilla's tutorial is helpful for getting a hello world extension working but it doesn't really go past that.

Now I just need to get it worthy of a 0.1 release.

Source Code

I have been spending time looking through the Mozilla source code trying to find out how the spell checking works. I knew it wasn't going to be easy but when you have no idea what any of the variables and functions you are looking at do and there are different parts coded in different languages it's not easy to understand anything.
I wish I could put some advice in this post about how to go about the searching but it really is just trial and error, searching different function names you think might have something to do with what you are looking for.
This has given be an appreciation for commenting because when there are comments, even just one line saying what the function does it can be very helpful. So if I get nothing else out of this I will always put at least a line of comments for every function I write.

Open Source

I am glad to be taking this class because I have always felt that school as a whole frowns on what open source is based on. Sharing ideas and using other people's work is likely to get you kicked out of school in any other course. The idea of having a course that leaves these ideas behind to allow me to explore another realm of programming is very exciting. I 'm not sure exactly what to expect but I'm sure that whatever this course has to offer will be a new experience that I will enjoy.