{"id":4414,"date":"2010-05-06T14:38:37","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T21:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3.462"},"modified":"2012-04-12T19:36:27","modified_gmt":"2012-04-12T19:36:27","slug":"jetpack-sdk-0-3-and-a-peek-at-whats-coming-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/2010\/05\/jetpack-sdk-0-3-and-a-peek-at-whats-coming-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Jetpack SDK 0.3 and a peek at what&#8217;s coming next."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been working on the Jetpack project for about a month now &#8211; implementing features, fixing bugs, and generally helping move things forward as we build out the wide set of capabilities needed to enable an *awesome* future for Firefox add-on development.<\/p>\n<p>The Jetpack team <a href=\"http:\/\/mozillalabs.com\/jetpack\/2010\/04\/29\/announcing-jetpack-sdk-0-3\/\">released the 0.3 version of the SDK<\/a> a few days ago, which has a bunch of platform improvements and also the <a href=\"https:\/\/jetpack.mozillalabs.com\/sdk\/0.3\/docs\/#module\/jetpack-core\/context-menu\">context menu API<\/a> &#8211; the first UI feature to ship in the SDK. Daniel put up <a href=\"http:\/\/mozillalabs.com\/jetpack\/2010\/05\/01\/using-jetpack-sdk-0-3-context-menu-api\/\">a great post about how to use this new API<\/a> that shows how easy it is to build UI features with Jetpack. The <a href=\"https:\/\/jetpack.mozillalabs.com\/sdk\/0.3\/docs\/#guide\/programs\">SDK documentation<\/a> has more examples, sample code and API details. The Programs page of the SDK tutorial in particular shows how the add-on development process has *changed* with the SDK. For example, all of the manual packaging steps are *gone*. That&#8217;s right. No more crazy directory structures, no more RDF files, no more GUIDs. All of that stuff is gone, replaced with a couple of simple commands. It&#8217;s not perfect yet, but expect it to get even easier to both package and deploy add-ons as we build out the SDK further.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s next? The 0.4 release is where the feature set of the SDK really starts to blow up:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/103\">Panels<\/a>: Floating rich content, tooltips, contextual UI.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/116\">Private Browsing<\/a>: Making it easy for add-ons to respect your privacy.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/111\">Selection<\/a>: Remember how awesome it was having an intuitive selection API in Ubiquity?<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/113\">Localization<\/a>: Simple access and distribution of locale data.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/108\">Page Worker<\/a>: Like a <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.mozilla.org\/En\/Using_web_workers\">Web Worker<\/a>, but with more privileges and a DOM.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/104\">Simple Storage<\/a>: Persistent object store &#8211; like DOMStorage for add-ons.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/114\">Places<\/a>: Improved bookmarks and history searching and browsing.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/102\">Widgets<\/a>: A preview of the ideas <a href=\"http:\/\/mozillalabs.com\/jetpack\/2010\/04\/08\/the-single-ui-element\/\">Daniel<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/jboriss.wordpress.com\/2010\/04\/29\/removing-firefoxs-status-bar-and-rehousing-add-on-icons-part-1-of-2\/\">Boriss<\/a> have recently blogged about.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/Labs\/Jetpack\/Reboot\/JEP\/109\">Request<\/a>: Even easier AJAX (Please don&#8217;t make that into an acronym. Please.)<\/li>\n<li>Installable without needing to restart Firefox (trunk builds only).<\/li>\n<li>Documentation: More and better!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And it&#8217;s not just about the feature set: The diligent focus of the Jetpack core team on developer ergonomics, and the experience gained from the Jetpack prototype and projects like Ubiquity, is resulting in a set of APIs that are far more intuitive and easy to use than the current XPCOM-riddled minefield that add-on developers have to deal with today.<\/p>\n<p>If you have questions or suggestions, let us know in the comments, or join us on <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.google.com\/group\/mozilla-labs-jetpack\">Jetpack developer forum<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been working on the Jetpack project for about a month now &#8211; implementing features, fixing bugs, and generally helping move things forward as we build out the wide set of capabilities needed to enable an *awesome* future for Firefox &hellip; <a class=\"go\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/2010\/05\/jetpack-sdk-0-3-and-a-peek-at-whats-coming-next\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":456,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4414"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/labs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}