Well I’ve decided to embark upon a magical whimsical journey into the realm of Firefox extension/add-on creation. And so far it’s a barrel of painwater. I do my damnedest to blame my inexperience with javascript, XUL, RDF, etc. but really, it’s a pretty messy world down there.
My main complaint is that I know exactly what I want to do and how I want to do it, but … well to pull a metaphor it’s like trying to rock climb with sports-event foam hands. I had a handle on the problem, the goal was in my grasp, and it just kept on slipping away. I double and triple checked everything and confirmed what was what…
And that’s when programming is the most frustrating and most rewarding. You know you’re within inches of the goal for the day, but no matter what you try it just isn’t working. And then it all falls into place and you can close all those damn docs and windows down with the assured knowledge that:
Tomorrow is another day.
The next phase of development will be 100x simpler.
It won’t be long before the exact same situation occurs again.
And this is just a simple data structure that’s implemented in probably 90+% of all programs. More details in a few weeks or months when I’ve got it nailed down… actually if you’re a gambler I’d put my money on right before Firefox 3.0 is out or at least in late beta so that all my work is for naught.
-Adam