Mozilla 'Jetpack' takes off

Mozilla's new extension technology,'Jetpack' is beginning to gain momentum as developers across the world check out the new platform for developing extensions for Mozilla's web browser, Firefox.

The platform, which was announced this week, allows developers to create extensions for Firefox using CSS, HTML and JavaScript using a new Application Programming Interface (API). Users will also be able to install these new extensions without having to restart their browser, something which annoys many users currently. According to a blog post on the Mozilla blog "The add-ons community for Firefox is arguably one of the largest, most vibrant sources for innovation on the Web today. However, we’ve only scratched the surface of its potential." By utilising the technologies that many web developers already know, Mozilla is hoping to "grow our community of developers" in an area which will soon become more competitive once Google adds support for extensions in its browser, Chrome. While Jetpack is not yet ready for full public integration with Firefox, its a promising start for the open source project. Firefox already has a thriving extensions development community, and prides itself on the amount and quality of the available extensions to its browser and this new way to develop will bring even more developers to the board.