Turkish Deasciifier: Future-proof (or compatible with Firefox 6.* at least)

I’ve just received an e-mail from the Firefox Add-ons Team related to my Turkish Deasciifier add-on:

Dear add-on author,

Good news! Our automated tests did not detect any compatibility issues with your add-on Turkish Deasciifier and Firefox 6. We’ve updated your add-on’s compatibility to work with Firefox 6.* so that our Aurora users can begin using your add-on. Firefox 6 beta is expected in just a few weeks.

You can learn more about what’s new in Firefox 6 at
http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/06/07/making-compatible-with-firefox-5-and-6/
and
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_6_for_developers

For more information on our new compatibility process with rapid Firefox releases, please read this post:
http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-compatibility-rapid-releases/

Thank you,
Firefox Add-ons team

 

Firefox 4.0 compatible Turkish Deasciifier (v. 0.2.2) is released

I promised to thousands of users who used Turkish Deasciifier that I’d release the version compatible with Firefox 4.0 as soon as Mozilla released it. Well, better late than never, it took me some time to find the suitable interval during which I could work on it but finally it is officially reviewed and released. Current users will get it via automatic update mechanism within Firefox. New users can install it by visiting
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/turkish-deasciifier/
.

Enjoy automatic conversion to Turkish letters while using your non-Turkish keyboard.

For users who don’t want to install the add-on but use it online we always have
http://turkceyap.appspot.com/
available for your linguistic pleasure.

For more info and news visit
http://ileriseviye.org/blog/tag/turkish-deasciifier/
. For grabbing the source code and suggesting patches visit
https://github.com/emres/jetpack-turkish-deasciifier
.

 

Modifying old Turkish Deasciifier code to make it compatible with Firefox 4.0

I promised to the users of my Turkish Deasciifier add-on that I’d release a Firefox 4.0 compatible version as soon as I can after 4.0 of Firefox is released. I started to work on the old code which was based on an ancient version of Add-on SDK. It took me some time to wrap my head around the radical changes that the Add-on SDK team did to various APIs but finally I was able to port the old code into the new version that uses the latest version of Add-on SDK.

Emacs environment for developing Firefox add-ons using Add-on SDK (Jetpack)

I uploaded the packaged .xpi file as version 0.2.2 to addons.mozilla.org and it is put into the review queue to be reviewed by someone from the add-ons team at Mozilla. As soon as it’s officially reviewed, users of the old version will get an automatic update. Or they can simply visit
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/turkish-deasciifier/
in order to enjoy automatic Turkish letter conversion on non-Turkish keyboards.

 

Turkish Deasciifier Firefox add-on version 0.2.1 is published

Turkish Deasciifier Firefox add-on is a tiny add-on that lets you type Turkish correctly without a Turkish keyboard. I listened to requests from its users and added a keyboard shortcut: WindowsKey + Shift + t or in other words Meta + Shift + t. I know this key is probably already assigned to some functions in Windows 7 and that the right thing to do is to present a user interface to the end-user so that she can select the combination herself but I checked this with people who requested this feature and once they confirmed that it was good for them I did a minor modification to the code and released version 0.2.1.

During the process I learned that Jetpack SDK is now named as Add-on SDK and the system moved to version 1.01b. I also discovered that this latest version of Add-on SDK is not compatible with Firefox 3.6.x series anymore and that is why I had to rely on an older version of Add-on SDK to prepare the new version of Turkish Deasciifier add-on. It looks like this is the time to worry about Firefox 4.0 compatibility: Making your add-on compatible with Firefox 4. In this case I prefer to wait for the official release of Firefox 4.0 and then I’ll update my add-on as soon as possible (and will add the user interface (preferences) for shortcut selection). In the meantime ‘2011 Jetpack Roadmap‘ by Myk Melez provides a very good reading for everybody doing Jetpack / Add-on SDK based development.

You can read more about Turkish Deasciifer at
http://ileriseviye.org/blog/tag/turkish-deasciifier/
and browse the source code at
https://github.com/emres/jetpack-turkish-deasciifier
.

If you want to try the system without using Firefox or an add-on you can visit
http://turkceyap.appspot.com/
.

PS: Speaking of Firefox 4.0 beta, you should definitely give it a try because it is a huge pile of awesome.

 

webTaskTimer: How much time do you spend on which web page?

webTaskTimer plug-in helps Firefox users to easily see how much daily time they spend on which web pages.

Once you install it the extension will start to measure how much time you spend on which page and if you want to see the results just click on the blue arrow on the top left corner of your tab bar.

webTaskTimer

Please be aware that this is developed using Jetpack technology so you need to install Jetpack first.

The source code repository is at
http://github.com/emres/webTaskTimer

 

ClozeFox Update: Detection for Dutch language, preposition test for Dutch and saving results to Twitter

Recent features added:

• Detection for Dutch language: If the plug in can find enough text it can check whether the page is in Dutch. It uses
  http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Frequency_lists#Dutch
  as a global frequency list.
• Preposition test for Dutch: A very simple and not still %100 correct preposition test for Dutch (the problem is that the some prepositions such as ‘van’ are both used as a preposition and frequently as a part of people’s names, e.g. ‘Jean Claude van Damme’. Routines to detect this shoud be added).
• Send result to Twitter: If this otpion is selected then the score of the current test is sent to the user’s Twitter account, along with a shortened URL of the current page. http://ur.ly is used for that in the background.

To learn more about ClozeFox please read previous related entries at
http://ileriseviye.org/blog/?tag=jet4learning
.

Disclaimer: The plug in is still in pre-alpha stage and not intended for public use however if you want to give it a try the source code is fully available at
http://github.com/emres/clozefox
.

 

ClozeFox Update: Adding the test strategy for prepositions and a context menu

As JetPack Design Challenge for E-learning is progressing we keep on adding features to the ClozeFox plug in.

The latest features added are

• Now the ClozeFox plug in can turn the page you are looking at into a language test for prepositions.
• Your score is stored permanently and can be seen via the slidebar.
• The test and score functionalities can now be activated by right-clicking on the page and using the ClozeFox menu group in the context menu.

The plug in is still in pre-alpha stage and not intended for public use however if you want to give it a try the source code is fully available at
http://github.com/emres/clozefox

 

Mozilla JetPack Team is looking for a Jetpack API Developer!

One of the best job ads (with an attitude) I’ve ever seen came from the Mozilla Firefox JetPack Team:

We are looking for a developer to come work for Mozilla on Jetpack javascript APIs!

What is required:

- That you love, nay need the web, like air, water, food, twitt… well you get it
- You are good at javascript, like Doogie Howser good.
- You know exactly what the following two items are: XPCNativeWrapper, wrappedJSObject.
- You are a pro at accessing the contentDocument with chrome privileged js and manipulating XUL elements like none other.
- You wouldn’t mind a change of venue… Mountain View area perhaps?

Some totally optional stuff:

- Know C/C++
- Know Python

If you are a go on all the required points above, and interested in rocking the web as a member of Mozilla, please email breck…@mozilla.com with your resume and tell us why we need you on the Jetpack team!