Open in IE Version 1.5

Today marks the release of an updated version of my Open in IE add-on for Firefox. This add-on is utilized by over 10,000 people on a daily basis to open certain sites in Internet Explorer that don’t work correctly in Firefox. I originally developed this to addressmy own frustrations, but I am thrilled to see that so many other people have benefited from my work.

Looking Back

This update fixes a couple nagging bugs which I had received feedback about. But it also marks a major change in the architecture of the add-on. Prior versions were XUL-based, meaning they contained a mix of XML and JavaScript to modify the browser chrome—adding menu items, a toolbar button, and an options window—and handle click events. With that architecture, the functionality was spread over several different files and folders, some XML, some JavaScript. Even for me as the lone developer, it was a confusing mess every time I revisited it to make updates. From the user perspective, the main drawback of this approach was thateach install or update required youto restart the browser in order to see the new functionality.

Today

The new version is what Mozilla calls a “bootstrapped” extension. With the new add-on architecture, the user does not need to restart the browser after installing or updating the add-on. It is immediately incorporated into the browser’s UI and functionality. But behind the scenes, in the code, the changes are radical. Radical, but definitely better! All the same functionality was accomplished with just two JavaScript files and a handful of icons. An SDK provided by Mozilla made the transition as painless as possible, with command-line tools for creating the files, loadingthe add-on for testing in the browser, and packaging everything up for deploying to the add-on site. A future blog post will detail the steps involved in this transition.

Also, I’m happy to announce that the add-on is officially open source! While you have always been able to download the xpi file and open it up to see what’s inside, I have now posted the source code to GitHub. That means you can browse the code yourself and see how it works. Also,if there is a specific feature that you would like to see in this add-on, you can code it yourself and create a pull request to get it incorporated in the released version. Enjoy!

Looking Ahead

With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft is retiring Internet Explorer and replacing it with a new browser named ‘Edge’. The Open in IE add-on can be madeto target Edge by changing the path to IE in the options window. But to make life easier, and to keep the statistics separate, I will be publishing a new add-on that targets Edge by default. Look for this new release around the time of the Windows 10 release.