Komodo extensions

Most fans of the Mozilla or Firefox browsers know that much of the appeal of the program lies not in its standard features but in its third-party .XPI extension programs. Elegant add-ons like the newsreader Sage, the weather-reporting tool ForecastFox, and the indispensible Adblock and FlashBlock quickly become must-haves.

Somehow, though, I never connected that since my favorite Python IDE, Komodo, was built on top of Mozilla, .XPI extensions could be built for it as well. The hint came from reading this post by ActiveState's own Shane Caraveo on the komodo-discuss newsgroup. A little further digging in the Komodo 3.1 Professional modules directory revealed that the PerlDevKit toolbar itself is a .XPI extension.

After a little effort of my own, I was able to create a small HelloWorld program that attached itself to Komodo's help menu and display a JavaScript Alert box. I followed the guidelines from Eric Hamiter's Firefox Extensions tutorial, but after running into some problems, I also consulted some XULKit examples also to get things running.

One real issue is that Komodo doesn't have an uninstall option for extensions like Mozilla itself. Instead you have to follow the directions here in order to do it, which is a pain, but so far I haven't done anything catastrophic.

Now I'm on the road to building a task list tab for Komodo's output window, similar to the one in VS.NET. I'm using the current Komodo JavaScript code as a guideline, but already I'm discovering I need to know XUL templates, XPCOM, and probably some CSS too. Whew!

Something exciting though: a quick check on Google for "Komodo .XPI extensions" doesn't really come up with any prior work, so I have the opportunity to plow some new ground here.

I'll keep posting here as I make progress.

July photos

Some recent family pictures from our Fourth of July holiday weekend.

New insulin

I switched to Lantis, a 24-hour insulin, after a visit with my new endocrinologist about a week ago. It has made a huge difference for me. I was having problems with my blood sugar rising as I was sleeping, usually about 3-4 a.m. Usually I would stay up until about 11 p.m. - 12 a.m. before taking Humulin N so it would peak at the right time while I slept.

Using Lantis, I haven't had any more problems with high blood sugar in the morning. I take it about 11 p.m. and wake up in the 90-140 range. What a relief! Many times I would wake up in the morning feeling groggy and sluggish because my sugar could be around 200-250. Lantis seems to have eliminated all that.

It's unfortunate you can't combine it with Humalog -- Lantis has to be taken in its own syringe -- but that's the only (very minor) downside I've found so far.

Highly recommended.