Komodo allows to edit macros in editor windows, this feature simplifies the macro code writing.

Do you need to know if you are editing a macro? Well You must fight with koIPart interface.

After digging into Komodo IDLs I found a way to know if current view is a macro, take a look at code shown below.

var currView = ko.views.manager.currentView;
var fileURL = currView.document.file.URI;
var macroPart = ko.toolboxes.user.toolbox.getChildByURL(fileURL);
var isMacro = macroPart != null && macroPart.type == “macro”;

I’ve asked at irc.mozilla.org#komodo channel and mixedpuppy confirmed me this is the best way.

I want to migrate to Firefox 3 and stop compatibility with FF2.x so I’m starting to use intensively FUEL.

Today I’ve replaced the old “open new tab” code shown below

newTab : function (url) {
const newTab = getBrowser().addTab(url);
getBrowser().selectedTab = newTab;
}

With the FUEL version

newTab : function (url) {
var uri = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/network/io-service;1"]
.getService(Components.interfaces.nsIIOService)
.newURI(url, null, null);
Application.activeWindow.open(uri);
}

Onestly I found so complicated the FUEL approach.

Why I need to create an URI?

Why open doesn’t work with a simple string?

BTW FUEL is great

My extension MoreKomodo overloads many elements

• command set
• toolbar buttons
• menu items
• find results tab

Due to my laziness I’ve added all these overloaded elements in main morekomodoOverlay.xul file.

It contains not-strictly-related code all together, for example the find results tab code is separated from other UI elements.

I’ve found very useful to overload more than once the same element inside chrome.manifest to isolate xul code and also javascript code.

It’s very easy

overlay  chrome://komodo/content/komodo.xul chrome://morekomodo/content/modokomodoOverlay.xul
overlay  chrome://komodo/content/komodo.xul chrome://morekomodo/content/findResultsOverlay.xul

That’s all folks

I continue to add content to official Komodo wiki page.

I’m not sure ActiveState is boring to read my contributions but I think a centralized place is better than my blog.

The last added page topic treats the Komodo Notifications, a powerful mechanism to be informed about editor activity.

Only the most important notifications are listed but I hope to complete the list

radiogroup is the worst XUL widget I’ve ever used, its usage is made boring due to RadioStateChange listener but the real annoying behavior comes on when you want to change radio selection from code.

It is very innatural because changing radiogroup’s selectionIndex doesn’t trigger RadioStateChange and you need to create an event by hand and trigger it.

var myEvent = document.createEvent(”Events”);
myEvent.initEvent(”RadioStateChange”, true, true);
document.getElementById(”radioGroup”).dispatchEvent(myEvent);

But this is not sufficient, the RadioStateChange handler is called twice, the first one to “unselect” and second one to “select”.

Doesn’t exist a simple manner to determine if handler is called to “unselect” or “select” so you can’t use the radiogroup’s selected propery.

The solution consists to test all radios selected property to find the checked element.

if (document.getElementById(”folders-radio”).selected) {
…
} else if (document.getElementById(”files-radio”).selected) {
…
}

My extension VisualDiffer contains two nsITreeViews that must synchronize scrolling, when user scrolls one the other tree moves the selection to the corresponding row.

Apparently XUL trees don’t have any event handler to intercept scrolling operations so I run the risk to became crazy.

After days spent to find a solution (using google) without result I’ve tried to use the DOMAttrModified event and amazingly it worked.

First I add a listener to the tree (VisualDiffer adds listeners to left and right trees)

document.getElementById(“left-tree”).addEventListener(“DOMAttrModified”,
function(event) { gFolderDiffer.onLeftScroll(event);}, false);

The onScroll simply checks if event.attrName is “curpos” and if it’s true the tree has been scrolled by user

onLeftScroll : function(event) { if (event.attrName == “curpos”) {
rightTreeView.treebox.scrollToRow(leftTreeView.treebox.getFirstVisibleRow());
}
}

This solution works fine but maybe exists a better way…

A ViewSourceWith’s user posted an interesting question on forum: how to reuse an already running GIMP instance.

I’ve never incurred on this problem on my Linux box so I was very surprised.

Booting under Windows I’ve found this different behavior, very strange because the GIMP documentation explains how to obtain the opposite effect using command line switches, i.e. running always new instances.

IMHO the reuse technique under Windows is bugged so I found a workaround using the not so famous gimp-win-remote executable program present on bin directory.

gimp-win-remote checks (correctly) if GIMP is already running and reuse it.

I’m curious to know if Mac OS/X complains to unix world, if you have a Mac and would satisfy my curiosity I will update the ViewSourceWith FAQ page

Today my planet.mozilla feed contains a post from ActiveState’s technical leader Shane Caraveo.

Shane’s post title is “Success is…” where incidentally speaks about my VisualDiffer, he tries to define success from different points of view.

I think his team success arrives from good (and very hard) work.

Now I try to define unsuccessful from my personal point of view.

Unsuccessful is

when you born in wrong place at right time

when you work with stupid people, in stupid companies

when you must leave a software company unable to help you to work better

when smart developers find your work interesting but you can’t work with them

have a blog with two visits per month

speak (or write) a bad english

When I migrated to Ubuntu I loose some important developer tools like UltraEdit and Beyond Compare two closed-source commercial applications representing the state-of-art like editor and file comparator.

I’ve created MoreKomodo (the original name was UltraKomodo ) to add to KomodoEdit the UltraEdit features I need.

Folders and files comparison tools under Gnome are poor so I’ve decided to create my own differ application based on KomodoEdit for at least three reasons

KomodoEdit is open source

KomodoEdit is XUL based so I can develop re-using my know-how

KomodoEdit is multiplatform (thanks to Mozilla Gecko Engine)

Finally I’ve finished the first stable version of VisualDiffer, it misses many features but I hope to add them.

I’m working to my Extend Firefox 2 Runner Up winner Table2Clipboard.

Many users tell me to add a simple feature, exclude cells having style display: none.

The solution is so straightforward that I could not believe after initial implementation.

You can style an element using CSS selectors

.invisible {
display: none;
}

<span id=“invisibleSpan” class=“invisible”>I’m invisible man</span>

or using the attribute style attribute

<span id=“invisibleSpan” style=“display : none”>I’m invisible man</span>

These two ways can both simply handled using getComputedStyle

var spanElement = document.getElementById(“invisibleSpan”);
var style = spanElement.ownerDocument.defaultView.getComputedStyle(spanElement, null);
var displayValue = style.getPropertyValue(“display”);

That’s all folks!!

Obviously you can use any CSS attribute not only display.

Pay attention to ownerDocument.defaultView, you should use window.getComputedStyle() but under XUL this doesn’t return what you expect.

getComputedStyle can be used in normal unprivileged HTML code, too.

getComputedStyle is a W3C standard and is present on Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, too.

Little things make developer life easier.