Firefox Addons

Welcome to my Firefox Addons page. So far I have written one addon, the Homepage Randomizer, but I do hope to add a few more when I get the time.

Addons:

Picks a random homepage from a user defined list. Useful if you want to check different websites frequently, but don't like the Firefox default of opening multiple tabs if multiple homepages are defined.


Comments

your extension > locale support

hello :)
I noticed your nice little extension was missing a locale structure, so
I created one to be grabbed temporarily here

http://goofy37.perso.cegetel.net/extensions/homepage_randomizer_locale_support-1.0-fx.xpi

Though there are few strings to be
translated, I suggest you should submit it to http://www.babelzilla.org
to get more locale languages for free (currently en-US only).

BabelZilla is a community of volunteer translators dedicated to the
translation of extensions for moz family apps. We have people from all
over the world currently maintaining translations for more than 370 extensions
with an online translation system.
You are welcome to hop on there :)

Have a nice day
- jean-bernard
aka Goofy
BabelZilla Team


Thanks a lot for the info.

Thanks a lot for the info. Locale support is definitely something I was planning to add, and the resource you mentioned looks good.


love, love, love this addon!

love, love, love this addon! i've been waiting for something to give firefox this added functionality for a long time! what i'd really like to see in future releases is the ability to add multiple selected folders of bookmarks at one time. perhaps an interface with checkboxes next to all the folders in your bookmarks list to indicate what bookmarks will be added to the homepage list. maybe even a way to read directly from your bookmarks in real time so that new bookmarks added to your selected folder will be updated to your homepage list automatically. please don't stop development on this! this is a great addon and there's still so much potential in it! did i happen to mention i love this addon?


Locale structure

Hi, I'm Slovak translator, I translated your extension, but then I found out that the structure of locale files is not complete and can't work. The translations may be there, in the locale folder, but you didn't define them in the chrome.manifest file. There is just one language - English. It means that it doesn't matter how many translations you will have in the locale folder - in browser it will always show up in English. For example: in the chrome.manifest file, there is line, containig this:
locale homepagerandomizer en-US chrome/locale/en-US/
It means that you told the browser that the extension contains English translation. English is general laguage for locale structure, so it must be there. But if I wanted this extension to work in Slovak, I had to add this line:
locale homepagerandomizer sk-SK chrome/locale/sk-SK/
It means that it contains Slovak translation and if the browser's native language is Slovak, it will show up in Slovak. If the browser's native language is for example French, it is looking for line with "fr-FR". If it finds there, it will show up in French. If that language is not there, it will show up in the general language - in English.
By whole this long post I was trying to explain you that for each translation you have to have one line with its language defined, otherwise it will always show up in English, even if translations are correctly placed in locale folder.
BTW I've put the Slovak translation on Babelzilla, find it there.


suggestion

Hello, I like your add-on however i was wondering about adding one more feature... how about the ability to have one constant homepage in the primary tab on startup and then in a second tab put a random page from the user defined list ....

pseudo-not really- code
like
gmail.com| yahoo.com or kittenwar.com


Homepage Randomizer Extension - Feature Requests/Suggestions

Hi Jawahar,

I recently came across your Homepage Randomizer extension, and found it to be potentially useful. Here are mys suggestions (read requests :) for improvement in feature-set of the extension:

I think it can be more useful to replace the "Randomizer" feature with a "Cycling" feature so that the user knows what homepage is going to open at the next click. That will also eliminate the occasional annoyance of opening the same homepage upon clicking the Home icon. Randomness can be persisted with if an option to choose cycling (instead of randomizing) be added for those desiring predictability. Also, retaining the opening of a random homepage at the first launch of Firefox can be perfectly acceptable provided subsequent clicks on the Home icon or subsequent opening of new instances of Firefox starts cycling from the last opened homepage.

This extension seems to be the perfect platform to add the highly useful Homepage Icon Functionalities of IE -- i.e. a drop-down menu beside the icon to open any of the multiple homepages, to add the current tab to the list of multiple homepages, and to remove any of the listed homepages. To improve upon that, adding a sorting (alphabetical or any order) could be useful and adding an option to open all homepages in multiple tabs will definitely be useful.

Microsoft has taken clues from Firefox and have outdone it in some feature-sets, e.g. the aesthetically pleasing Quicktab feature and the aforementioned options associated with IE's Homepage icon. I wonder why Firefox can't return the favor and emulate or outdo whatever good features IE has come up with lately. An enhanced version of your extension can possibly contribute towards that effort.

Thank you for the good work.


Excellent suggestions

Mozillaphile,

These are some excellent suggestions and I believe they have a place in this extension. I am kind of busy at the moment, but I will put them on my to-do list (may be a couple of months). BTW - anyone reading this - the code is GPL, if you want to take a shot at improving the code, be my guest.

Thanks for the feedback!


Add this feature - focu on one tab from multiple on startup

Hi,

I like your extension 'Homepage Randomizer'. Now I have multiple homepages (2) and I want Firefox to focus on the tab to the far right and not the first tab on startup, is it possible to add this small option feature to homepage randomizer

please let me know via email.