Anthony is one of the driving forces behind that project, so I thought it would be fun to pick his brain to find out what his part in the project is, and what advice he might have for other hopeful Greasemonkey script writers or Firefox add-on developers.

What all have you done in development for the Firefox Greasemonkey extension?

I’ve definitely lost track of when and how exactly I first learned about Greasemonkey, and when I got involved.  Luckily, I can look up enough old records to get a pretty good idea of what the right answer here is.

I first interacted with Greasemonkey as a user.  Quickly though I graduated to User Script author.  My earliest blog post about a script I authored was in March of 2005.  I wrote a few scripts, some quite popular, for a while.  By June, Mark Pilgrim contacted me about being included in the “Greasemonkey Hacks” book, essentially a cookbook-like collection of existing User Scripts, with discussion about what they were and how they worked.  I was included as a contributor when that book was published.

I am first credited in a commit message from November, 2006.  That’s when I first began development of Greasemonkey itself, nearly three years ago.  At the time, the original creator, Aaron Boodman, was very much in charge and I was minimally involved.  Over time, I became more and more involved in the development process.

The first change I made to the source code directly, rather than submitting to the maintainers and being recognized for, was in February of 2007.  It was a very gradual process from there, but by some time in 2008 I was one of the more recognized authorities within the development community.  Finally, in August of 2009, the project’s original creator stepped down from the role of primary developer, handing the reins to myself and Johan Sundström, leaving me in the “co-lead” role with Johan.

Development progress over time has been relatively slow.  On one hand, Greasemonkey serves its purpose quite well, so doesn’t need to change very much.  On the other, there was a more complicated and difficult process for agreeing to and including changes.  Now that I’m more “in charge” than ever, I (along with Johan) am hoping to make it easier for Greasemonkey to progress, in the future.

As far as scripting and coding goes, how did you get started and what would you suggest somebody who wants to write their own Greasemoney script or Firefox add-on go to learn more on how to do so?

I’ve been programming since I was 10 or 11 years old.  Even earlier than that, I did “programming” by typing source code from a magazine into the Atari BASIC interpreter.  By my teens I was writing little programs, and by college I was beginning to learn PHP.  I got involved heavily in web development, and have been doing that professionally for six years now.

I was interested in Firefox extension development from the word go. Back in the 1.x days, however, tutorials and documentation was sparse, varied, and confusing.  Luckily today these problems have been solved. Mechanisms in Firefox 2 and 3 help make extension development easier, and both documentation and examples are much easier to find and understand.

I actually tried, and failed, to make my own extensions a few times. I finally got my first one running in June of 2005. Since then I’ve made a few of my own, and gotten involved with Greasemonkey.  For new extension authors, the developer.mozilla.org site is definitely the place to go, today.

User scripts are a different beast, and thankfully quite a bit simpler.  If you know javascript, you can probably get your first user script working in just a few minutes.  To learn how, visit the Greasespot Wiki, specifically the Manual.  The “common pitfalls” article by Mark Pilgrim is also very useful.

As an add-on developer, is there anything else you wish that the Mozilla team provided, or do you feel pretty happy with the information and support that they provide to developers?

It’s hard to say.  At this point, I’m a seasoned developer, so most of what I need is in my head.  There are two things that I would really like though:

Something like xulplanet.com’s XPCOM reference. The xulplanet.com site is now dead, giving just a link to the general developer wiki.  This is a good and helpful wiki, *but* has two weaknesses: it covers many disjoint topics (i.e. both web development, and extension development), and lacks the coverage that xulplanet.com
had.  There are many interfaces that, now, are harder to discover and understand.  Since xulplanet went away, I’ve found myself resorting to reading the source directly, which is more difficult to navigate to, and more difficult to read.

Better support for venkman. Venkman, the javascript debugger, was once quite wonderful.  Today, it’s often difficult to find the file you want to access (sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not) and almost impossible to find those that are/are referenced by javascript components.  Venkman seems to have bitrotted a bit.  Personally, even for web development, I strongly prefer it to Firebug for script debugging — it provides a multi-paneled interface that is significantly easier to use, than that of Firebugs, which is designed to fit in that tiny band at the bottom of the browser.

How big of a role has working on Firefox add-ons played in your professional life?

Almost none.  I interviewed for, but ultimately did not accept one position that would have been FF extension development.  My previous job did include creation of one extension, a port of the IE specific add-on that the company made, but was a secondary/side role.

What Firefox add-ons or Greasemonkey scripts are you a fan of?

For extensions, I like FireBug and Firecookie, JSONView, Open In Browser, and Web Developer extensions.

Most of the user scripts I use, I wrote myself.  Of those I find Linkify Plus and Submit in Select to be indispensible.  But I also use Check Range, and Google Reader Quick Links.

For more information on Anthony, what he does and his work – be sure to check out his personal site Arantius.com.  To check out all the Firefox add-ons he has been a part of, you can also check out his profile page on the Mozilla Add-ons web site.  From all the Firefox fans, I would also like to thank Anthony for the work he has done to (in the long run) make Firefox a better browser for all.

Want to know exactly how you are making use of the Firefox web browser?  Here are six of the best add-ons for Firefox that will give you every statistic you would ever want from your own day to day usage.  From cache, to download usage, and even easy cache status – we have something here for everybody to make use of.

Net Usage Item – Displays a progress bar of your Internet usage (grabbed from your ISP) on your Firefox Toolbar.

Usage Counter – Tells you how much time you have spent using Firefox and browsing sites.

StatusbarEx – Show some useful information on status bar of Firefox, such as the memory usage of system & Firefox itself, network speed, system power status, etc.

Minimeter – Monitor your provider’s upload/download usage meter.

DataFox – Check your BSNL DataOne and MTNL Triband bandwidth utilization in Firefox at the click of a button. A color coded progress bar and bandwidth usage tracking helps you stay within your monthly cap and efficiently utilize your bandwidth.

Cache Status – Easy cache status & management from the status bar.

Know of another favorite usage add-on that didn’t make it to the list?  Be sure to leave your suggestions in the comments!

Hope all is well in Foxie Wire land!  It has been a great alternative resource for Firefox news and interesting links.  Would hate to see it get lost. If anybody knows the inside scoop, let me know!

Update: Looks like it is back now. :)  Here is an update from the webmaster on how you can help out:

We are back
its been a long week changing from pligg to drigg

its not 100% working out all the bugs you may need to request a new password to login

if your a drupal or drigg guru and want to willing to volunteer some free time please contact me anytime

Thanks Jamey for the update!

If so then be sure to check out the 70+ Nice and Beautiful Firefox Wallpapers highlighted over at hongkiat.com.  Some of theme are those that you have seen rounded up here in the past, but others are even new to me so I am sure they are probably new to you too.

With the upcoming weekend holiday, I know a lot of you will want to stash away a few links to save for later – maybe when Uncle Sam is telling you his World War 2 stories again or when the pool is full, or you has a belly filled with mashed potatoes. Here is a little link love for some other popular, interesting and neat stories from around the Web.

Use Yahoo! Mail or Gmail for MailTo Links in Firefox 3

Top 10 Firefox 3 Features

Mal-what? Firefox 3 vs. Bad People

Firefox 3.1 targeted for year’s end

What Happened to the Microformats Support in Firefox 3?

Rotten Tomatoes says IE7 “Rotten”, Firefox 2 “Fresh”

Firefox Team Crossing The Delaware

Also don’t forget that today is Support Firefox Day! Have another link to share? Feel free to comment and post.

Taking a deeper look at the new site identification button inside of Firefox 3, dria.org does a good job at taking it apart and showing you what it is all about.  Honestly, it takes the padlock in browsers past and puts a whole new useful spin on it.   No longer is it just a yes or no answer on if a site is safe.  You get all kinds of useful information delivered right to you in a way you have yet to see in a next generation browser.

Check out more about Firefox 3: Site Identification button!

Over at CyberNet they have posted a great guide on how to create your own smart bookmarks. Smart bookmarks are the new feature to Firefox 3 that allow you to bring up your saved links in new, unique and useful ways. For example, you could browse through your most recently bookmarked links, your most recently visited links, and so on.

Check out Create Your Own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3!

• 600 Million Add-ons Downloaded from Mozilla
• Firefox 3 Beta 3 expected early next week
• Firefox 2.0.0.12 Released
• Make Firefox Start Faster with a Preloader
• Easily convert Greasemonkey scripts into Firefox extensions
• iGoogleBar: Google Apps Bar with iGoogle Gadgets
• FoxyTunes joins Yahoo!
• Better YouTube Firefox Extension
• About:IceCream?
• Too Many Tabs? Firefox Add-ons to manage a TAB JAM

Firefox Media of the Week

(I was cheering for the Firefox to take down the stick man!)

The Best Stuff You Didn’t See Here This Week:

• Review: URL Link
• Run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 at the Same Time
• Firefox 3 Themes for XP & Vista
• Firefox vulnerability affects some extensions
• If Firefox was a Saturday Morning Cartoon…
• Facebook Beautifier
• Optimizing Firefox (Best Picks: Shortcuts, Speedups, Extensions)
• 5 Things You’ll Love About Firefox 3

Firefox Media of the Week:

• Open a Folder of Bookmarks with the Mousewheel Click
• Various Mozilla News, Notes and Updates from the Week
• Firefox 2 installer now available on 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch floppies
• Firefox 3 Beta 2 Released
• 12 Essential Extensions for Web Developers & Designers
• firefox flicks, japan style
• Operation Firefox winners announced

Have any others to share? With this being the pre-holiday blitz I am amazed so much Firefox stuff has been going on the last few weeks.