A step... urr.. backwards?

I talked before about my thought process and the start of my browser. I did some more on the browser but it all got a bit annoying and not exciting enough to keep my attention.

Well since then Iv used selenium a lot at work which includes a firefox extension that provides an IDE. Iv hacked a little on it and looked around trying to work out how to do various things and generally understood a bit more about firefox extensions. Enough indeed to get me looking more and more at firefox extensions and finally I understand enough to write my own.

So... now Iv written the plugin that started me writing my own browser. Dont really need that browser anymore... it was interesting and I may still go back to it yet - but for the moment Im now happy with firefox again. I say happy, I mean mostly satisfied!

Firefox code is quite fun - if you like javascript - which I do have a sick fascination with. Im not sure the XUL/firefox docs are that great but then browsing source always keeps me more interested than reading straight forward docs anyway. Chromebug (firebug for XUL) works quite well - tho Iv had to revert to writing my own debug log functions which is annoying. Im too used to firebug and using its console.

I probably should of mentioned what my extension did by now - it keeps activity information associated with each tab ( Im calling activity any clicking/scrolling/key pressing ). It then provides a menu item to show a dialog with a list of all your tabs sorted by activity. You can select many items at once and close them. This means I can quickly close all the tabs I havent touched in X amount of hours.

Iv also added to the plugin a way to quickly assign a shortcut key to a tab so I can skip around. Kind of like temporary bookmarks.

What Id really like is to drop tabs altogether and go for something a bit more interesting to choose what Im looking at... also Im thinking I should start using bookmarks in some clever way... but this is for another day.

Extension is here http://github.com/dunkfordyce/dunks_gubbins/tree/master/tooomanytabs/

The thought process of a kuya

• I open too many tabs and I can never be bothered to close them
• Maybe there is a firefox plugin that can look at the last time a tab was scrolled/clicked/something so I can have something pop up and show me the most un-used windows and let me close them all at once.
• /me looks for firefox plugins
• /me cant find anything that looks right
• Should I learn how to write firefox plugins...?
• I wish I could do it in python...
• /me remembers python-webkit and pymozgtk
• All I really want (in a browser) is tabs and something to remember my history...
• It couldnt be too hard to write my own browser...
• /me starts writing his own browser

Now the observant will realise Iv gone from one problem, quite simple and not important, to a completely different problem thats much bigger and much more complicated.

This seems to be the pattern I follow! Im not entirely sure if its a good thing or not. It results in large projects - that I probably wont ever finish. On the other hand I get to try out some really cool things ( which is surely all I care about ).

Well anyway I have a basic tabbed browser using python-webkit. Lets see what becomes of it...