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Is it possible to engage an addon using an external command?

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3 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

The Chatzilla URL is chrome://chatzilla/content/chatzilla.xul. To open just that window and not the browser itself, use the -chrome option. -no-remote is added to prevent an existing session being used.

The command for just starting Chatzilla becomes:

firefox -no-remote -chrome chrome://chatzilla/content/chatzilla.xul

If you've multiple profiles, specify the profile name too or the path to the profile:

firefox -no-remote -P default -chrome chrome://chatzilla/content/chatzilla.xul
firefox -no-remote -profile /path/to/profile -chrome chrome://chatzilla/content/chatzilla.xul

This may work for other add-ons as well, just look in the [profilefolder]/extensions/*/chrome.manifest file for possible URLs.

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So how can find out what *.xul is for what addon? Not that I need anything other Chatzilla for now... – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 13:15
It's often chrome://[name]/content/[name].xul, you can check the lines in the chrome.manifest file. – Lekensteyn Jun 22 '11 at 13:17
I cam across two issues: first, when opening irc:// link, it opens a Firefox window, and if Firefox is already running the dialog box saying Firefox is already running, etc appears. Do you know of any solution? – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 13:36
Hmm, if you're not sharing a Firefox profile, you can remove the -no-remote option. Could you test it and report back? – Lekensteyn Jun 22 '11 at 14:15
Behavior is subtly different this time. On first invocation of CZ, Firefox appears along with CZ. While that is running and I try opening another link, a tab on the open Firefox window with link appears and another CZ window. Never new CZ could have multiple windows... – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 14:37
up vote 2 down vote

Ubuntu Forums has a nice tutorial to demonstrate how to run firefox addons such as chatzilla outside the firefox browser - obviously the addon must support this mode of working.

I've taken the liberty of copying the suggested code - but have updated with the latest stable versions.

install for xulrunner:

sudo apt-get install xulrunner-1.9.2

Get the sources for chatzilla:

wget http://chatzilla.rdmsoft.com/xulrunner/download/chatzilla-0.9.86.1-xr.zip
sudo mkdir /opt/xulrunner/chatzilla
sudo unzip -d "/opt/xulrunner/chatzilla" chatzilla-0.9.86.1-xr.zip
rm chatzilla-0.9.86.1-xr.zip

Now run the chatzilla app:

xulrunner -app "/opt/xulrunner/chatzilla/application.ini"
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The repositories do already have a xulrunner-1.9.2 package. If you've a 64-bit system, the 32-bit binaries from Mozilla cannot even be used. – Lekensteyn Jun 22 '11 at 13:31
And I wouldn't want to decouple Chatzilla from Firefox. But this is a nice solutions for independent addons that's useful outside the browser. – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 13:37
up vote 0 down vote

Unless the addon explicitly contains some command, no.

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Contains some command? In my specific case, I want open Chatzilla (it can run without any Firefox window running). – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 12:53
@Oxwivi have you looked into the addon's folder or tried to find out if they provide a standalone version? – RolandiXor♦ Jun 22 '11 at 12:56
Nope, I'm totally unfamiliar with how they actually work, hence the question. I'll do as you recommend now. – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 13:06
Found chatzilla.jar - anything I can do with it? – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 13:07
There's also chatzilla-service.js. – Oxwivi Jun 22 '11 at 13:08
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