Integration of SDK information to corresponding MDN pages

[Brett Zamir]

Hi,

Was just curious if there were any formal plans or actions underway to
integrate or at least cross-reference SDK information on the MDN pages
more so that add-on developers may know of the availability of
equivalent functionality there?

Also, in developing an SDK addon, admittedly without too deep of any
study, I was left with the impression that there was no way to access
XPCOM directly, and since I wasn't migrating at the time, I hadn't
thought to check at
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/1.4/dev-guide/addon-development/xul-migration.html
. I think knowledge of this ought to be very compelling toward
encouraging addons developers to make the move, even if more were better
informed than me.

Thanks,
Brett

[Ali Spivak]

Hi Brett,

yes, we're looking into ways to integrate SDK into MDN. Having better access to add-ons information for developers is one of the things I want to cover in the redesign we just kicked off. It'll probably be a couple months before I know exactly when and what we are going to do, but it is definitely on the radar!


ali spivak
MDN Product Manager, Mozilla
408-859-8260
asp...@mozilla.com

----- Original Message -----

_______________________________________________
dev-mdc mailing list
dev...@lists.mozilla.org
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-mdc

[Will Bamberg]

Hey Brett

On 12-10-09 7:50 AM, Ali Spivak wrote:asp...@mozilla.com

>
>
> Was just curious if there were any formal plans or actions underway to
> integrate or at least cross-reference SDK information on the MDN pages
> more so that add-on developers may know of the availability of
> equivalent functionality there?
>

Yes. We're planning to move the SDK docs to MDN in the next few months,
and as Ali says, we'll be doing some work to improve the structure of
MDN which should make this stuff more findable.

> Also, in developing an SDK addon, admittedly without too deep of any
> study, I was left with the impression that there was no way to access
> XPCOM directly, and since I wasn't migrating at the time, I hadn't
> thought to check at
> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/1.4/dev-guide/addon-development/xul-migration.html
>
> . I think knowledge of this ought to be very compelling toward
> encouraging addons developers to make the move, even if more were better
> informed than me.

You're right that XPCOM access, while important, isn't well presented or
very easy to find. I've been meaning to do something about this for a
while, so thanks for bringing it up. I raised a bug for it here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=800004 (only just missing
the bug #800000!), please feel free to comment there if you like.

Cheers

Will

[Sheppy]

Sorry that it took me so long to weigh in on this, although between Will and Ali, it looks like it's covered.

We've always had in the backs of our minds the plan to migrate the add-on SDK documentation to MDN once the SDK gets integrated into Firefox. This is coming very soon, so that time is nearly upon us!

Once that happens, expect a much tighter integration between "classic" add-on development documentation and SDK documentation. That should make life easier for everyone!

Eric Shepherd
Developer Documentation Lead
Mozilla
http://www.bitstampede.com/

[Sheppy]