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29 September 2010, 09:47

Jetpack 0.8 helps automate web site mashups

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Until recently, if you wanted to automatically modify the display of web site pages when you accessed them, you needed the Greasemonkey extension, but now the latest version of the still-in-development Jetpack, you can do the same with JavaScript. Jetpack 0.8 adds the PageMod API, which allows JavaScript code to be registered for execution when specified pages are loaded. Users can then add their own JavaScript instructions to the registered code to modify the formatting or the colour scheme. More advanced users and developers can add new interactive elements into the page to add functionality to an existing web page.

Another new API provides access to browser windows and tabs. Event handlers can be registered for both object types for the events open and close, and tabs also send activate, deactivate, ready, load and paint events. The Panel and Page Worker modules also now behave more like Web Worker for HTML 5. One known issues it that some Jetpack tests fail with the nightly releases of Firefox 4 which is currently in development.

Jetpack based extensions allow for developers and users to extend Firefox without using the old XUL extension system which is hard to maintain. Jetpack extensions can, for example, can be installed, reloaded or removed without restarting the browser.

Updates on Jetpack's progress have now moved to the Mozilla Add-ons blog as the project has graduated from Mozilla Labs to become a full Mozilla project.

(djwm)

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