This is the homepage of the Mozilla Plugins project, where we've collected hyperlinks to resources for plugin developers.
Last updated by Johnny Stenback on 11/17/2004

Note: Plugins and extensions are completely different technologies, they have nothing to do with each other (apart from being related to Mozilla). In layman's terms, if you want to add a button to Firefox User Interface, using XUL and JavaScript, you want an extension. If you want to write some C++ code that can show something embedded inside a webpage, you want a plugin. A extensions are AdBlock and NoScript, typical plugins are QuickTime and Macromedia Flash.

APIs and guides

• Cross-browser NPAPI extensions for plugin scriptability (NEW!)
• Netscape DevEdge Plugins Central
• mozdev.org's PluginDoc for end-users
• The Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI) documentation (that's been updated for Gecko but the old 4.x docs are here with Liveconnect)
• Documentation about Mozilla specific plugin scriptability (deprecated) can be found here and here
• How to make scriptable plugins in OSX for both CFM and Mach-O browsers
• Documentation on writing a plugin installer that recognizes Mozilla-based browsers for Windows.
• How to ensure that your plugin is always detected by Mozilla-based browsers that get installed after your plugin.
• The Plugin Identifier (PLID) Specification
• Using the XEmbed extension for plugins

Plugin samples in the tree

• The SDK sample source can be found in the mozilla.org plugins module or zipped up here for Win32 (zip includes buildable MSDEV 6 projects and the GeckoSDK from Mozilla 1.4b)
• Default (aka "Plugin downloader") Plugin (npnull) Source
• npruntime (new scriptability API) Sample Plugin Source - How-To for Visual Studio
• Active-X Control support inside Gecko plugin (npmozax) Source
• NPAPI Spy plugin Source
• Mac OSX MRJ Java Plugin Source (uses OJI and XPCOM instead of NPAPI)
• Threaded NPAPI plugin sample Source
• NPAPI tester plugin Source
• Tip: you can use cvs to checkout the latest tools and sdk samples:
  cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot co mozilla/modules/plugin/tools

Additional Resources

• Daily build of GeckoSDK for
  • Win32
  • Linux
  Note: The GeckoSDK contains all the needed tools and headers needed for making scriptable plugins for Gecko including the xpidl compiler/linker and the latest npapi.h
  
  
• The ActiveX control for hosting NPAPI plugins in ActiveX control containers such as Internet Explorer.
• Newsgroup: mozilla.dev.tech.plugins
  E-mail gateway: dev-tech-plugins@lists.mozilla.org (subscribe/unsubscribe)

Links to testcases

• mozilla.org QA Plugins testcases
• mozilla.org QA OJI testcases
• Plugins Verification Testing Checklist (including SmokeTesting) located here.

Bugzilla Queries

• UNCONFIRMED plugin bugs
• DUPLICATE plugin bugs
• FIXED plugin bugs
• OPEN plugin bugs
• Create a new plugin bug