Developing a browser (Firefox) extension with D

[Justin Johansson]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Justin Johansson" <no at spam.com> wrote in message 
> news:hdvrmr$215l$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> I'm just wondering for a moment if D might be a good vehicle for 
>> developing a browser extension for Firefox, or any other browser for that 
>> matter.
>>
>> Has anyone either considered doing, or has actually done, any browser 
>> extension development with D and have some thoughts or experience to 
>> share?
>>
>> Thanks for all feedback,
>> Justin Johansson
> 
> I thought FF extensions were JS-only, is that not the case? 

While extentions can be written/partly written in JS, the "system level"
for extensions is C++.  The FF code base is built on a single-threaded
COM model (similar in theory but definitely not binary compatible with 
Microsoft COM).  Think it's called NSCOM (as in Netscape).  Components 
(aka objects) are managed with the usual AddRef/Release and interfaces 
found with the familiar QueryInterface (familiar that is if you have 
ever used MS COM).  The basic interface of a component is NSIUnknown or 
similar.  The methods of the NSIUnknown interface are AddRef, Release 
and QueryInterface.  Such mechanism effectively implements a 
reference-counted garbage-collection strategy.

As with a lot of COM development (in C++), people often resort to the 
use of so-called smart-pointers to hide/manage calls to AddRef and 
Release.  So my guess/hunch is that if D is any good for writing MS COM 
applications, it might also be good for writing FF extensions.

If it could be demonstrated that D was a good platform for writing FF 
extensions, that might be a boon for expanding D's "market acceptance".