At 15:53 11/15/2005 -0800, DJA wrote: >Extensions are new to Firefox and Thunderbird. They are like plug-ins in >that they extend the capability of the app, but how they differ >technically from plug-ins I don't know.
An extension uses the native XPCOM (Mozilla/Firefox cross-platform objects written as a DLL/shared objects) and Javascript bindings to add additional capabilities to the browsers. Although it's programming, there isn't really anything much added to the browser. A plugin is a DLL/shared object programmed to add functionality that could never have existed in the original platform. Macromedia Flash player is a good example, as well as the Java runtime. See the book "Rapid Application Development with Mozilla", Nigel McFarlane, Prentice Hall for the ugly details. The XPCOM stuff is modeled on Microsoft DCOM, so you can guess where that takes you. Gus -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
