Jetpack 0.3 – Selection & Clipboard APIs

For the past month, we’ve been busy working on an update to Jetpack, taking into account all of the feedback we’ve received. There are now over 60,000 people who have the Jetpack platform extending their browsing experience. And many of these Jetpacks have been written by first-time extension developers. Jetpack 0.3 focuses on adding some new abilities, as well as continuing to refine existing APIs.

Note that Firefox Firefox 3.5 is required.

What’s new?

Selections:
One common design pattern in Jetpacks has been performing an action on or upon a selection. For example, looking up a selected word on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, getting the currently selected text, or figuring out when a selection has occurred used to be far easier said than done. Now it’s super simple. Take a look at the demo and API documentation.

Clipboard:
You can now get and set text from the system clipboard. Check out the demo and the API documentation

What’s been updated

Slide Bar:
Slide bars have been very well received, with dozens of Jetpacks implementing on top. Based on the feedback we got, we’ve dramatically revised the API. We’ve also added new features, like the ability for a slide bar to notify the user of an update in a fun but non-obtrusive way. Check out the demo, or see the API for changes.

Note that Jetpack 0.3 includes a slidebar API that is incompatible with the previous API. All slide-bar-based Jetpacks will need to be updated.

Persistent Storage:
Jetpack.storage.simple is now synchronous (we got a lot of great feedback about the treachery of being asynchronous) and sports a great new API. See the demo and the API documentation.

Prettier:
Especially noticeable on OSX, status bar Jetpacks now look a lot better by default.

Get Involved

Mozilla Labs is a virtual lab where people come together online to create, experiment and play with Web innovations for the public benefit. The Jetpack experiment is still in its infancy and just getting started. There are many ways to join the team and get involved:

We’re also looking for a full-time product manager and software engineers to join Labs and work on Jetpack! What title is better than Jetpack PM? Check out the career opportunities available.

– Atul Varma and Aza Raskin on behalf of the Jetpack development team.

6 responses

  1. ju wrote on :

    i want to contest jet pack next month from malaysia next year

  2. ju wrote on :

    se you in final

  3. Brandon wrote on :

    OMG, it is definitely down and it has been so annoying trying to figure out how to use jetpack since i just downloaded it and i keep finding links to jetpack.mozillalabs.com and i keep timing out. i just decided to disable it and wait for teh network to be up and maybe for them to release some more versions before i try again

  4. wakka wrote on :

    Is jetpack.mozillalabs.com down?

  5. pcdinh wrote on :

    I find Jetpack roadmap is a bit outdated. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Jetpack/Roadmap

    Also the link http://www.mozilla.org/Labs/Jetpack/JEPs (Write a JEP) is broken

  6. jimmy miller wrote on :

    Like the new release. Fixed my Wikipedia jetpack to use the official api. The only problem is your demo breaks my jetpack. I don’t know if this is a bug in on of the jetpacks or in the api itself. Any ideas?