I’m really excited about the latest thing we’ve built at Brand Thunder. It’s an interactive browser theme that changes based on the weather.

We’ve partnered with WeatherBug to give you all the weather information you could ever want. Forecasts, severe weather alerts, current conditions.

We even use geolocation to try to figure out where you are.

Give it a try – I think you’ll like it.

In previous versions of the CCK, I provided the ability to hide and or/lock the CCK that is generated. Locking prevents the user from uninstalling the add-on, but it is rather useless since the user can still disable it. Hiding preventing the user from disabling or uninstalling.

Unfortunately Mozilla removed the ability for an add-on to hide itself in Firefox 3.6.

Luckily working around this is very easy and will be included in the next version of the CCK Wizard. In order to make this work, I’m going to provide one option that hides the add-on. Lock and hide will no longer be separate. This seems rather logical since the lock option is pretty useless by itself.

Note that none of these options work unless the add-on is installed in the same directory where the Firefox executable is located.

I’ve updated the CCK Wizard for Firefox 3.6. It’s available here. It will be on AMO once the translations are done and if no one finds any major issues. Here’s a summary of the changes:

• Updated for new Firefox 3.6 proxy panel
• Two CCKs can now coexist (Company Identifiers must be unique to each CCK)
• Bundling XPIs and JARs no longer uses XPI bundles – they are explicitly installed upon first run of the CCK (please test this if you bundle multple XPIs)
• All translated CCK Wizards should now be working
• First run screen added to CCK Wizard install
• A few bugs fixed

Some other items of note:

As I mentioned before, I’ve moved CCK Wizard development to Google Code. Please feel free to open up bugs there.

Going forward, I’m going to add the ability to do more locking down of functionality in Firefox. If you have specific needs, please open bugs in Google Code.

To close this post out, I want to answer a couple questions about CCK Wizard that are asked a lot.

What is the right way to install the CCK?

There are multiple ways the CCK can be installed based on your needs. I’ll go through all those ways.

Standard install – The XPI that is created by the CCK Wizard is just a Firefox extension, so as such it can be placed on a web page and users can simply click to install. You can get more information on how to do this from the Mozilla developer center.

In the Firefox directory – Extensions can be installed directly into the Firefox directory. Inside of the directory where the Firefox executable is located, there is a directory called extensions. Inside this directory, you can create a directory with the same ID as your CCK and then unzip your CCK into that directory. This is the only location where you can hide the add-on.

As part of a Firefox install – I’ve previously documented how to bundle the CCK in the installer and how to package the installer on Windows. These instructions still hold true.

Globally – There are designated locations in different operating systems where extensions can be installed and they are picked up by Firefox. You can get more information on these locations at the Mozilla Developer Center. This involves unzipping the CCK package in a specific location on the users hard drive into a directory that is named the same as the ID of the CCK. Using this method, you can manage the CCK package centrally and the user cannot uninstall the CCK from Firefox.

Via the Windows Registry – If you are on Windows, extensions can be installed via the Windows registry. This is documented at the Mozilla Developer Center. This involves unzipping the CCK package that you created to a central location and then adding a registry key that tells Firefox where to find the CCK. Using this method, you can manage the CCK package centrally and the user cannot uninstall the CCK from Firefox.

What do the options “Do not show this extension in the extension manager” and “Prevent the uninstall of this extension” do? They don’t seem to work for me.

These options only work if your CCK is located in the extensions directory where the Firefox executable is located.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Do you need to do even more customization of Firefox for your organization? That’s what we do. Contact Kaply Consulting.

Last Friday was the one year anniversary of when I was laid off from IBM so I decided to take a day to unplug and reflect on the past year. As I was sifting through my thoughts about the previous year, one thing kept coming to mind:

Be intentional!

I realized that I spent too much of the past year simply going with the flow and hoping things would work out. As a result, I was wasting a lot of time and energy. I was just letting life happen to me.

You can’t live life like it’s one big accident. You have to live your life on purpose.

Lots of speakers describe this concept. Stephen Covey says to “Be proactive.” Zig Ziglar says “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” Dave Ramsey says “Things don’t move unless you move them.”

But here’s what I discovered. Deciding what to do isn’t enough. You also have to decide what NOT to do.

You see, I can decide to work on something, but if at the same time, I don’t decide NOT to surf the web, or NOT to get distracted by Twitter and Facebook, I can end up thinking I’m working but in reality I’m just wasting time.

Or I sit down at the TV to watch one show and three hours later I’m still sitting there because I didn’t decide NOT to watch anything after I finished the one show.

When you are self employed or running a small business (or any business for that matter), you’ve got to be intentional. You’ve got to aim at something. You’ve go to be proactive. And you’ve got to move something. And you’ve got to eliminate the stuff that simply isn’t important.

If you don’t, either nothing will happen or lots of stuff will happen, but none of it will really matter.

So I moved things that I’ve been needing to move since I was laid off. I created a basic business plan. I created some revenue goals. And I created a mission statement.

To delight my clients by creating Firefox extensions that meet or exceed their needs.

So now I just have to make sure that every day I’m being intentional. For me, that means setting aside specific block of times to focus on specific tasks, including ALL my Firefox extensions. It means not checking my email every five minutes. It means using tools like SelfControl to make sure I’m not distracted. It means I need to stop saying “I should do this” and either do it or don’t do it.

It means making sure that everything I do has purpose.

Every time I sit at my computer or the TV or the XBox 360 need to make sure I do it intentionally. Or I’ll simply waste my time. I’ve got to have boundaries. It’s ok to spend some time on Facebook. An hour on Facebook? Probably not so much.

So what are you doing to be intentional?

Thanks to Steve Rowe – I had come up with a lot of this myself, but his blog post really solidified it.