ubufox 0.4~beta1 - new features for ubuntu firefox

[Alexander Sack]

Hi,

just in time for feature freeze I uploaded ubufox 0.4~beta1 which
ships two hot ubuntu firefox features proposed by the
firefox-distro-addon-spec [0].

The Features
=============

1. Apt-Enabled Plugin Finder Wizard

  You can now select ubuntu packages in the plugin finder wizard [1]
  [2]. I have setup a testpage so you can trigger this new feature to
  see it in action [3].

  To test the multi-content ([2]) use-case you might want to uninstall
  your current flash plugin and press the "Install Missing Plugins
  ..." button.


2. Extension Manager gnome-app-install integration

  The addons dialog has now a link ("Get Ubuntu Addons" [4]) that starts
  gnome-app-install with all firefox xul-extensions we have in the
  archive [5].


TODO for gutsy final
======================

+ UI polishing:
  - improve layout of origin-icons displayed on the right-side of each
  plugin finder result (e.g. align them to the right)
  - add tooltip information for the origin-icons so people get an idea
  what they mean when they hover them with the mouse
  - rename link in Addons dialog to read "Get Ubuntu Extensions"  
  - make the multi-content case [2] use one wizard page per content-type.

+ Plugin Finder Webservice:
  - find a home for production!
  - enable plugin finder webservice to add official pfs.mozilla.org
  results as well. For now i had to disable it because rookery doesn't
  allow outbound connections through https. A complete plugin finder
  webservice is available on my DSL line.
  If you want to test how it looks like please change your
  pfs.datasource.url in about:config like:
  s/people.ubuntu.com\/~asac/jxtaim.dyndns.org\/~alex/ and you should
  see a plugin result page for flash that looks like [6].

+ Permission checks:
  - when you don't have permissions to install debs through synaptic,
  the apt results shouldn't pop-up in plugin-finder-wizard. We will do
  that by checking the unix-groups the current UID is in.


Credits
========

Many thanks to (alphabetic order):

  * Hilario J. Montoliu (hjmf) - plugin package meta data
  * Michael Vogt (mvo) - apturl implementation as well as sponsoring
    gnome-app-install + app-install-data packages
  * Sasa Bodiroza (jazzva) (my MOTU student) - ubufox implementation +
    putting together the app-install-data for our extensions
  * Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor) - gnome-app-install improvements


Refs
======

[0] - https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/firefox-distro-addon-support
[1] - http://people.ubuntu.com/~asac/pfs/screens/pfs1.png
[2] - http://people.ubuntu.com/~asac/pfs/screens/pfs2.png
[3] - http://people.ubuntu.com/~asac/pfs/test/2_multicontent.html
[4] - http://people.ubuntu.com/~asac/pfs/screens/Screenshot-Get-Ubuntu-Add-ons.png
[5] - http://people.ubuntu.com/~asac/pfs/screens/gai-xul-extensions.png
[6] - http://people.ubuntu.com/~asac/pfs/screens/pfs3.png


Please test and have fun,

 - Alexander