Note To Extension Authors
When preparing for the localized releases of Firefox RC1, we discovered a chrome registration error that might bite extension authors in the behind. Extension authors, please apply this fix to any contents.rdf files which register locales.
October 23rd, 2004 at 6:06 pm
Could you explain this a bit further please.
– Why do we need this now, is it something that should have been used all along or has the chrome system changed in recent builds or is this a specific workaround for a bug with 1.0RC localized builds?
– Is it something that will be needed in all future releases as well?
– Will it have any (negative) effect when the extension is installed into the Mozilla suite.
– What happens when an extension installs a locale without this fix on a localized build?
Thanks.
Response from bsmedberg:
– This is something that should have been used all along, but we only uncovered and diagnosed it recently when we had real localized builds for testing;
– This is something that will be needed in future builds, as long as we keep using
contents.rdffiles;– This will not have any adverse affects on the suite; in fact, the suite probably has the same problem in localized builds;
– If you do not use this arc, it is possible that Firefox will not recognize your locale package and you will have XML parsing errors.
October 23rd, 2004 at 9:29 pm
How are you going to enforce this change? Will you not allow extensions on u.m.o when this hasn’t been changed properly? Or will you create a workaround which uses a default value if not specified (though this does not sound desireable to me)? Or maybe a better solution: will you make an en-US build of Firefox break if this hasn’t been set?
Because it would be a major turndown if international builds couldn’t run 90% of the extensions. That would pretty much remove one of the prime features of Firefox for the non-English user base.
~Grauw
October 23rd, 2004 at 11:07 pm
Some of the quotes on http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/bsmedberg/register-locale.html are smart quotes.
October 23rd, 2004 at 11:08 pm
Where can I find a localized build to test my extensions with?
bsmedberg says: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-0.9-l10n/
The zip builds from Oct. 22 won’t display this problem, and some of the installer builds won’t start, so you may need to wait until the builds from Sunday afternoon or Monday for good testing.
October 25th, 2004 at 1:35 pm
Grauw: This is no “change”, it should always have been that way. For example, the Mouse Gestures extension has been using chrome:name arcs/attributes in its locale contents.rdf files for about two years now (= since it has locale support). I have no idea why other extensions did and do not…