Have you ever needed to customize Firefox for deployment with in your organization or even to your family? That’s what the CCK Wizard is all about. It allows you to create an add-on that customizes Firefox. You can learn more about what it does at addons.mozilla.org.

I’ve recently updated the CCK Wizard for Firefox 4 and have made a beta available. You can click here to install it. Once everything looks good with the beta, I’ll put it on AMO.

So what’s the future of the CCK Wizard?

The CCK Wizard has always been close to my heart because it was my first add-on. I originally had plans to do some major enhancements to it, but my plate is pretty full with other work. It’s difficult to find time to work on my free add-ons. I’ll continue to keep it current with the latest Firefox versions, but going forward, I have no plans to add additional features to the CCK Wizard.

If you’d like to see the CCK Wizard continue, please consider contributing or participating in its development at Google code. You could also help out on the documentation side. It would be nice to get some of the docs current and organized:

• Old Docs
• Original CCK Docs
• Better place for docs

I also want to give a shout out to Rick Alther from IBM who has worked on the code and is keeping the flame alive inside IBM

The best way to demonstrate this is with some sample code. I’ll make some comments on at the end.

var firstrun = Services.prefs.getBoolPref("extensions.YOUREXT.firstrun");

var curVersion = "0.0.0";

if (firstrun) {
  Services.prefs.setBoolPref("extensions.YOUREXT.firstrun", false);
  Services.prefs.setCharPref("extensions.YOUREXT.installedVersion", curVersion);
  /* Code related to firstrun */
} else {
  try {
    var installedVersion = Services.prefs.getCharPref("extensions.YOUREXT.installedVersion");
    if (curVersion > installedVersion) {
      Services.prefs.setCharPref("extensions.YOUREXT.installedVersion", curVersion);
      /* Code related to upgrade */
    }
  } catch (ex) {
    /* Code related to a reinstall */
  }
}

Some comments on the code.

• I usually put this code in the JS file included in my XUL overlay. I don’t put it in a module. This makes it much easier to test it, since I can simply reset the preference and open a new window.
• I used Services.jsm in this example to make it simple. I don’t use Services.jsm, I roll my own custom Services file. I’ll show how in a future post.
• During development, I hardcode my version to 0.0.0. In my previous add-ons, I queried the version from the extension manager, but someone pointed out to me that this was a waste of code. Now what I do is parse install.rdf to get the current version and replace 0.0.0 with that version at runtime.
• I use a simple comparison for my versions, but if your versions are more complex (involving letters for instance), you should use nsIVersionComparator.
• There is no need for a try/catch around my call to get the firstrun preference because I put this line in my default preferences file.

  pref("extensions.YOUREXT.firstrun", true);
  

• In order to tell when a user has reinstalled my add-on, I remove the installedVersion preference when my add-on is uninstalled. I leave the firstrun preference behind.
• If you’re going to display a web page at first run, here’s how you do it:

  window.setTimeout(function(){
    gBrowser.selectedTab = gBrowser.addTab("http://example.com");
  }, 1000);
  

  I found that if you don’t use a timeout, the page will intermittently not display.

Hopefully this code is useful to you. Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions.