Ask HN: Are you a Firefox Extension Developer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you a Firefox Extension Developer?

8 pointseisokant3 comments

I am looking for a Firefox extension developer who is interested in turning the Tyba Firefox Extension into an opensource project, manage the code, make changes so that it's compatible with a new internal API (just a few changes of XMLHttpRequest URLs) and most importantly make it work cross platform. The groundwork has been done by a Firefox developer (it currently works great on XP and Vista) allready but it's proving difficult to make it work cross platform.

Besides the occasional freelancer (hence the initial FF extension) it's a bootstrapped one man startup I work on fulltime (I code and manage everything but the FF extension - currently out of my range of expertise). Our budget is not large but the majority of it is allocated to this.

I am really looking for someone who is enthausiastic about the idea of Tyba and is willing to initially spend some time to make it work cross platform, the api change and set it up as an opensource project and from then onwards just spend a few hours each week maintaining it.

If you would like to use the extension before replying just go to http://tyba.com and request an invite I'll be sure to send out the invites immediately.

You can contact me by emailing: contact [at] tyba [dot] com

Thank you,

Eiso

More information on Tyba, I found on his blog:

"The startup is Tyba and it’s a simple concept: You download a Firefox extension which allows you to rate web pages and append tags (a feature I like is that when you come from Google or Yahoo the search term is automatically sent with your rating). The rating and tagging is simple, done by clicking stars or using keyboard shortcuts. Then when you feel like it you can login in to the web interface and organize the links you’ve rated into groups. These groups become public and anyone can view them. The other Tyba users can follow your groups and you in turn can also follow other people’s groups. When you follow a group you can do two things, see when new links are added to them and you can search through them. It’s a bit like building your own search engine with the links you rate and the groups other people make. Right now all this functionality is there in its most basic form."

I've developed a few Firefox extensions, though I'm not available to help as I'm driving my own company.

What kind of platform-specific code does the extension use that makes it difficult to run cross-platform? I'm surprised it has problems because no extension I've ever coded required much more than visual tweaks across Mac/Windows/Linux. Some extensions clearly are tied to a platform, but from what is described here, I'm not seeing a piece that can't just be XUL/JS.

Good luck, regardless!

Thank you! The extension hangs under the tab and shows up when you hover over the tab. This breaks on Mac OS X and Linux plus the keyboard shortcuts don't work on these platforms. I am as surprised as you are that it doesn't work cross platform. Also thank you for posting more information about Tyba - it's much appreciated.

I'll forward this on to a FF extension developer I know.

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