Fennec/NativeUI/addons

Support

Fennec/javaUI will support Add-ons - both traditional and jetpack-based. Restartless add-ons are encouraged, especially since xul based overlays won't be useful in this browser. We plan to add capabilities based on what is needed for add-ons that are popular today with Fennec.

Add-ons can offer additional capabilities in the main UI and/or in web content.

All the XPCOM stack is available.

Content oriented features

No big changes there: fennec add-ons are using the e10s model which is also expected to work in a non-e10s setting.

Chrome oriented features

One of the challenges of Fennec add-ons has always been to find UI hooks. There are few places where you can actually add controls without risking to break the UI in various circonstances:

• The application menu
  
• The site menu
  
• The contextual menu
  
• The preference panel
  

We'll provide ways to add content in these UI contexts and to set up callbacks or observers to be notified when an action occurs.

Open questions

Being on a java platform, can we provide a way for add-on developers to implement functionnality in java? (this looks doable).

If not adding java code, at least to call into the java platform? (js-jtypes)

What's the add-on model of Dolphin?