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Mozilla The Internet

Patch Maker -- Mozilla Hacking & Patching Made 96

Posted by Hemos from the tweaking-it-out dept.
A reader writes: " Mozillaquest.com has an article about Patch Maker which is a new Perl script that let's you hack the Mozilla UI using JS, CSS, and XUL. You do not have to download or compile the source code or pull CVS. It makes writing and submitting Mozilla UI patches easier."
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Patch Maker -- Mozilla Hacking & Patching Made More

Patch Maker -- Mozilla Hacking & Patching Made

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  • WILL YOU SLASHDOT GUYS LEARN??? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hitokage_Nishino ( 182038 ) on Sunday October 07, 2001 @05:52PM (#2399728)
    Stop posting stuff from mozillaquest.com!

    Even if the stuff about scripting is true, mozillaquest exists solely to bash the efforts of those who spend their time working on the mozilla project. Don't vindicate that troll who runs it.
    • exibit A:
      The impetus for creating Patch Maker seems to lie in the fact that Mozilla bugs are raging out of control.

      Mozquest is a load of shit, wht's this guy's motivation with giving bad information about the Mozilla project? is it personal? is there some kind of corporate interest involved? Patchmaker is a great project and should make things easier for developing Mozilla UI. how abolut this link to the project itself:

      patchmaker page [mozilla.org]
      or the discussion on mozilla zine site [mozillazine.org]

    • Please don't mod this guy as a troll. What he says is very true. I think it'd be a better idea to link mozilla-related project news to mozilla.org, mozdev or mozillazine rather than to the malevolent mozillaquest.com.

      I don't really know the story behind it, but I've noticed (during years of following the mozilla project as nothing but an end-user) that most "news" or info from mozillaquest.com have been very hostile to mozilla.org and the mozilla browser. Does anyone care to shed some light on the whole situation?
    • The Patch Maker story ran in mozillaZine on Sept 27 -- quite a long time ago and there was quite a lot of discussion there [mozillazine.org], why couldn't slashdot have posted that link then?

      I suggest if you want to follow Mozilla news, go to mozillaZine and along the right-hand navigation click on the "Add Sidebar Panel" item (I'd make a link here but it needs more than a URL to make it go). Or go to one of the newsgroups, or watch the top items on Bugzilla (a great source for what's on the developer's mind). There's also This RDF newsfeed [mozilla.org] for top newsgroup threads. Am I making my point? Don't waste your time at mozillaquest, go to the real deal.
    • What is that? Open source way of requesting cencor?

      As I know, Mozillaquest was always critical about Mozilla project. Agree or not, for myself I agree some of them.

      This time, about yesterday when I checked that site, I saw the article... err.. I clicked like "Heh, now how he will flame them?" way of thinking. It was a positive one, real surprising.

      Here I open another RFE for Slashdot readers:

      a) Not to come as gang to Slashdot (count comment posters about "cencoring mozillaquest" via not linking them

      b) Check some Mozillazine comments. About actual Netscape developers (Corp. Ones) speaking about mailing "The Register guy" writing about Mozilla chief wrangler left article which mozillaquest uncovered first! They said publicly, so no problem to repeat here: "I will tell that guy about Mozillaquest" and check how Mozillaquest link WAS REPLACED with Mozillazine which cencored that story for 10 days!

      People, just because of Mozilla, I can loose all my respect for opensource. Not just killing my browser, PLEASE don't kill people's faith in Open Source way of understanding free speech!

      Stop it... Please!
      • Mozilla chief wrangler left article which mozillaquest uncovered first!

        The guy who runs MozillaZine works at Netscape one floor down from where Mitchell Baker used to work. Do you really think Mozillaquest knew about her being laid off before MozillaZine?

        Gerv
        • I guess my non native english is to blame.
          ---
          The guy who runs MozillaZine works at Netscape one floor down from where Mitchell Baker used to work. Do you really think Mozillaquest knew about her being laid off before MozillaZine?
          ---
          I knew Mozillazine is close to Netscape corp but not that much. Thanks for englighting me. That was the thing I tried to mean, Mozillazine knew the story but didn't release. I said "uncovered", not that they found a thing cosmically secret but somehow didn't get reported on "main", "semi offical" "fan" site.

          BTW, congrats on patch maker as I have a chance now.
          • It didn't get reported because it has had no real effect on Mitchell's work for the Mozilla project. She still does all the stuff for Mozilla she used to do. So why is it news?

            In the middle of November, I'm going to stop being employed by Netscape. Will that be a big story too?

            Gerv
  • Here's the main text of the article:

    >

    Patch Maker -- Mozilla Hacking & Patching Made Easy

    Mike Angelo -- 6 October 2001 (c)

    The Mozilla Organization's newest toy for Mozilla hacking is Patch Maker. It let's almost anyone familiar with XUL, JS, or CSS create patches to the Mozilla user interface - without having to deal with CVS (Concurrent Versions System), source code, C++, and/or compiling.

    Patch Maker makes it easier to write and to submit Mozilla user interface (UI) patches. It was written by Mozilla developer Gervase Markham primarily for people who are not in to, or up to, dealing with CVS and compiling. Even people that are up to snuff skill-wise might not have sufficient computer resources to work with the Mozilla CVS and compiling Mozilla source code.

    The impetus for creating Patch Maker seems to lie in the fact that Mozilla bugs are raging out of control. So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.
    XUL (pronounced zuul) is Mozilla implementation of XML that is used to describe the interactive Web-like page faces of Mozilla-based applications. Think of XUL as the Mozilla developers' name for an XML-based language used to describe the UI (User Interface). Creating a Mozilla skin or UI is mostly a matter of hacking the XUL, XML, CSS, JS and so forth that define the chrome and skin, and/or redoing the graphic images and widgets they use.

    To be more precise, however, XUL is not exactly XML. A standard XML parser cannot interpret XUL. That is why you cannot display XUL as a Web page with Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.x, or other non-Mozilla-based browsers. Mozilla-based browsers have a special parser that can interpret XUL.

    Here is how it works. The Mozilla browser suite is built on top of the underlying Mozilla application programming framework, which is written in C++. For the most part, the Mozilla browser-suite user-interface employs XUL, JS, and CSS. Patch Maker is a Perl script that let's you modify the user interface XUL, JS, or CSS and try your modification(s) without having to download, compile, or recompile the source code -- and without having to deal with CVS.

    More About the Mozilla Application Programming Framework

    Mozilla-based Web-browser suites, including the navigator, e-mail, news, and composer components, all are applications built to run upon the underlying Mozilla application programming framework. So what you see when you run such Mozilla-based Web-browser suites essentially are interactive Web-like pages defined and controlled by the XUL, JS, and CSS code, which is interpreted at run time.

    What you see when you open Mozilla or Netscape 6 (NS6) browser suites is not the Mozilla or NS6 program itself. What you see essentially is an interactive Web page generated by Mozilla and its Gecko layout engine.

    Web page is an oversimplification. The Mozilla Web-browser face is similar to a Web page in that it is laid out by Mozilla's Gecko engine much as the Gecko engine lays out a Web page. Mozilla-the-browser is a combination of text, images, widgets and so forth laid out by Gecko to form an interactive user interface. That interactive user interface is very much similar to a Web page. Something we will call a Web-like page here.

    Downloading & Using Patch Maker

    Patch Maker is limited to the XUL, JS, and CSS code that runs on top of the underlying Mozilla application programming framework, It will not let you create patches for the underlying Mozilla framework.

    You can download the Patch Maker script from the Mozilla Organization Web site. You also should read the Patch Maker Web page on the Mozilla Organization Web site. Links for the Patch Maker script and Web page are in the Resources Section at the end of this article.

    Patch Maker is designed primarily for Linux. However, according to the PageMaker Web site, you should be able to use Page Maker with Windows if you also download ActivePerl and Cygwin.

    If you would like to hack the Mozilla or Netscape browser suites without using Patch Maker, please check our Mozilla-skinning articles, MozillaQuest the Series: Building Your Own Mozilla-Based Web Browser .

    For more information about Mozilla the organization, Mozilla the application programming framework, and Mozilla the Web browser suite, please see the series, Mozilla--A Lizard for All Seasons. (Please check the Resources Section at the end of this article for links.)

    >
    • The impetus for creating Patch Maker seems to lie in the fact that Mozilla bugs are raging out of control

      Wow. And the Republicans call Dan Rather biased! Could the impetus just be to make it easier to make changes? Does it have to be bugs raging out of control?

      Disgusting excuse for a "journalist".

    • Here's the main text of the article:


      Although this is technically plagarism it does have the beneficial side-effect of denying Mike Angelo advertising revenue for his continuing hatchet job against Mozilla. Frankly I wonder what Netscape or mozilla.org did to him that he feels he must reel out one misinformed article after another.

    • Re:Just Incase some Slashdotting Occurs... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Gerv ( 15179 ) <gerv AT gerv DOT net> on Sunday October 07, 2001 @07:19PM (#2400108) Homepage
      The impetus for creating Patch Maker seems to lie in the fact that Mozilla bugs are raging out of control.

      In fact, the impetus for creating Patch Maker was to allow more people to contribute to Mozilla. Many UI designers are not able to manage the intricacies of our build process; many people do not want to purchase Code Warrior (on Mac) or MSVC++ 6 (on Windows) and are unable, for one reason or another, to install Linux. Many people do not have the bandwidth to continually download and update the CVS tree - even downloading a nightly is a major event which must happen at cheap telephone times.

      This software is for all of these people. For the first time, you can make a significant code contribution to a large open source project without the complexities of compiling.

      Note: Patch Maker is still in development; I would appreciate help porting it to Mac especially, and debugging it on Windows.

      Gerv

      --
      gerv@mozilla.org, author of Patch Maker
  • It would be cool if Microsoft did something like this, and called it "Window Maker" for a laugh.

  • Thoughts on MozillaQuest (Score:5, Funny)

    by XBL ( 305578 ) on Sunday October 07, 2001 @05:58PM (#2399753)
    Now, even though in the article Mike says that the reason for this "toy" is to help fix the bugs that are "raging out of control", at least he makes the article respectible, and professional.

    Mike is a very experienced writer who will undoubtedly move on to higher journalism, like maybe ZDNet. Heck, ZDNet might even turn MozillaQuest into a full-blown print magazine.

    Just remember folks, in a couple years, Mike Angelo will have gone places you have never dreamed. Even though people call the stuff he writes now "crap", I believe in him.

  • MozillaQuest (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07, 2001 @06:00PM (#2399765)
    Every time there's a story linked to MozillaQuest.com, somebody links to MozillaQuestQuest.com [mozillaquestquest.com]. So now I am. Why does Slashdot continue linking to this retard?
    • IE5 seems to be rendering it as an XML tree because it's very choosy about exactly what namespaces it supports. Obviously, the namespace pointed to at MQQ is a perfectly valid XHTML namespace that's been around for two years as a final draft (or whatever the appropriate terminology is). Try looking at the page in Opera or Mozilla and it'll render just fine. I ran into similar problems while developing some XSLT stuff. IE5 doesn't support the much more functional version of XSLT that has string operators and whatnot. You have to dig through MSDN to find a patch that'll let IE deal with it correctly. Again, IIRC, Opera and Mozilla processed my XSLTs just fine; IE just didn't support the namespace.

  • STOP USING THAT WORD (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stop saying "hacking" and "hacker". Do you want the government to shut down Slashdot for christ's sake?

  • Could their scripts be set up to run from a website? I remember the Netscape "Brown Orifice" crack that turned a browser into a trojan. Internet Explorer is already a laughingstock because of all the security flaws, would this make Mozilla just as bad?
    • There is no danger to end users from Patch Maker. It's a development tool, like your C compiler or an editor.

      Gerv
      • You say that now, but wait until its included as an email attachment that patches Mozilla to look like IE.

        It'll be the first email virus Microsoft promotes and will send to you on request.

        • You say that now, but wait until its included as an email attachment that patches Mozilla to look like IE.

          I don't think that Mozilla folks are too quick to include Perl interpreter to Mozilla... You know, the small little thing that's actually needed to run the script. =) Or, alternatively, I doubt Mozilla will suddently start allowing running random applications...

          It's just a script that is run entirely separate from Mozilla. It's not included to Mozilla itself in any way.

  • Consider linking instead to mozillazine.com instead, which has discussed this in great depth as well, and is not simply a site for trolls. And what is wrong with the idiot moderators moderating this point down? I suspect a majority of them have no clue what they are moderating and moderate on tone alone. pathetic.

  • I wrote this software (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gerv ( 15179 ) <gerv AT gerv DOT net> on Sunday October 07, 2001 @07:14PM (#2400087) Homepage
    I am the author of Patch Maker. Any questions about it may be directed to me :-)

    Gerv
    • So can I easily patch in a home button on the main toolbar as god truely wishes it to be? The removal of the home button from the main toolbar was a horrible thing...
      • If you know the code to insert, sure :-) Or if someone else makes a patch which does that, you can easily apply it to your Mozilla installation, at the cost of a small speed penalty because you will be running with unjarred chrome. It's not really designed for this, but it could be used to do it.

        Gerv
    • XUL (pronounced zuul) is Mozilla implementation of XML that is used to describe the interactive Web-like page faces of Mozilla-based applications. Think of XUL as the Mozilla developers' name for an XML-based language used to describe the UI (User Interface). Creating a Mozilla skin or UI is mostly a matter of hacking the XUL, XML, CSS, JS and so forth that define the chrome and skin, and/or redoing the graphic images and widgets they use.
      To be more precise, however, XUL is not exactly XML. A standard XML parser cannot interpret XUL. That is why you cannot display XUL as a Web page with Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.x, or other non-Mozilla-based browsers. Mozilla-based browsers have a special parser that can interpret XUL.

      Would it have been too hard to make it so an XML parser can interpret it? Is it okay for other browsers to have this special parser?

      • Re:Could you explain the second paragraph below? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Gerv ( 15179 ) <gerv AT gerv DOT net> on Sunday October 07, 2001 @09:13PM (#2400428) Homepage
        Did you read any other comments? Take everything you read at MozillaQuest with a very large pinch of salt.

        XUL is an XML-based language - just like XHTML, SVG or any of the others. The sentence "A standard XML parser cannot interpret XUL." is either wrong or extremely misleading. No XML parsers can _interpret_ what they read, but an XML parser can parse XUL perfectly. Mozilla uses expat for this purpose.

        That is why you cannot display XUL as a Web page with Internet Explorer 5, Netscape 4.x, or other non-Mozilla-based browsers.

        "Displaying XML as a web page" makes no sense. What happens is that you apply a style sheet to some XML (whether XHTML or something else) to display it. If you gave XUL a style sheet, it would display according to that style sheet. Essentially, this is what Mozilla does when it renders its UI.

        Gerv
  • So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.

    He actually got something right! It's not just developers hoping to get more bug-fixing help though. The Mozilla QA and testing community can use help as well. Gerv (creator of the Patch Maker [mozilla.org]) is also the maintainer of the Bugzilla Helper [mozilla.org] which, like the patch maker, was created to make it easier for people to contribute to the Mozilla project. If you're interested in helping to make Mozilla better and you've got DTML skills then you can probably help clean up the Mozilla UI with Gerv's Patch Maker. If you're interested in helping but aren't interested in development there are plenty of other ways to get involved [mozilla.org].

    --Asa
    • Darn, Slashdot doesn't like title attributes in links :( Repost with good links

      So the Mozilla developers are hoping to get more bug-fixing help from the Mozilla and Open Source communities by making it easier for people to write and submit bug-fix patches.

      He actually got something right! It's not just developers hoping to get more bug-fixing help though. The Mozilla QA and testing community can use help as well. Gerv (creator of the Patch Maker [mozilla.org]) is also the maintainer of the Bugzilla Helper [mozilla.org] which, like the patch maker, was created to make it easier for people to contribute to the Mozilla project. If you're interested in helping to make Mozilla better and you've got DTML skills then you can probably help clean up the Mozilla UI with Gerv's Patch Maker. If you're interested in helping but aren't interested in development there are plenty of other ways to get involved [mozilla.org].

      --Asa
  • Take a look at the docs at Mozilla's site:

    http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/patch-maker/ [mozilla.org]

    I have to say that with the Tab interface, support for the LINKS toolbar, and all of the other cool things Moz has been picking up lately, it is really becoming a brilliant application. I cringe when I am stuck using I.E. now.
    • Yes, with the tabs they've taken a lovely interface that I first saw in Konsole... it's my favoured form of MDI. (PWM does a similar thing as a window manager, but there would be a seperate instance of the program in each tab). I'd love to see this interface implemented in many more applications -- Konqueror for a start.

      Sadly, I didn't get to see the LINKS toolbar because it was only enabled for about half an hour, and I'm not downloading loads more 15 meg old nightly builds to see what it looks like. Does anyone have any screenshots?

  • Why the heck does /. keep posting stories at this site? MozillaQuest's content can be summed up as 1/3 FUD, 1/3 idiocy, and 1/3 plagiarism. At best it can can termed a "wannabe" site, and I'm more inclined simply to label it a travesty.

    This story was originally posted at MozillaZine [mozillazine.org] on Thursday. For anybody who visits MozillaZine or who has the Mozilla Sidebar turned on in their /. preferences, this is both a bad joke and stale news. Get with it, /. editors! There's just no excuse for this kind of sloppiness.

    Don't give this poseur any more hits! Please!

  • Why?? Why?? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by GauteL ( 29207 )
    Every time there is a mozilla-article posted on Slashdot, it is from MozillaQuest. This site is just pure trash, and should be treated as such. Editors: Please stop approving stories from MozillaQuest. MozillaZine [mozillazine.org] postet this last week.
    Repeat after me, "MozillaQuest has no journalistic value whatsoever, and should be ignored".

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