Yesterday we welcomed Mark Finkle to Seneca. He came to give a lecture on Firefox Extensions. I've been looking forward to this for a number of reasons. First, Mark's knowledge of extensions is really pretty amazing; however, in learning all he has, he hasn't forgotten about what it's like for new people. Second, I really wanted to get Mark here in order to show him where all the magic happens--he's been a huge supporter of all things Mozilla@Seneca.
In his talk he went over all of the various bits and pieces of building an extension. He also took Firebug and tore it apart, showing how the UI maps back to XUL, the manifest, etc. I find that this method of teaching extensions very successful: doing hello-world doesn't sit well with existing programmers, who want to do something more intense. While he was talking I overheard one of the student at my table whisper to his friend: "This is so cool...I'm like a kid in a candy store!"
The best part is that we'll be posting the video from the talk, so you can enjoy it too. I'll let you know when it's ready--I'm told that luser's talk is coming soon!