Mozilla Labs, the people behind the Firefox web browser, have recently announced their newest project: Jetpack. Jetpack is… well it’s a little complicated. From an end user’s point of view, Jetpack will be another type of extension you can install to add features for your browser. For developers, it’s an API to write add-ons for Firefox (and maybe “more” according to Mozilla) using technologies you already know.
The API will allow developers to use JavaScript (including jQuery support), HTML, and CSS to do things such as add information to the browser status bar, interact with or modify content on the current page, or add other functionality to the browsing experience. The development can even be done from within Firefox using Bespin and debugging is easy (or at least easier) thanks to Firebug. Jetpack extensions look to be similarly powerful to regular extensions but without much of the complications or the proprietary technologies.
Possible uses could include keeping track of your website stats or the daily sales numbers of your e-commerce site from your status bar, but we haven’t even begun to explore what Jetpack will become. As this is a version 0.1 release (and in Mozilla’s words is “unpolished, unfinished, and still highly prototyped”), the project is not yet ready for primetime. We will be keeping an eye on the development progress and be experimenting with how Jetpack extensions could be developed to provide added value to our clients.
Watch a Jetpack introduction and developer tutorial video below: