There are two mechanisms for labeling content on the Mozilla Developer Center: tags and templates.

Tags

At the bottom of each MDC page there is a section called “Tags”. These are folksonomy tags that apply to an entire page (for example, “Thunderbird” or “Thunderbird 3″). These are not pre-defined, so you can add a new tag (such as “Thunderbird 3.2″) as needed. However, please check the list of tags that is displayed as you enter letters in the “Tags” field, and try to avoid duplicating existing tags.

The main benefit of tags is that you can list all the pages that have a particular tag  by clicking the hyperlinked tag word. Therefore, don’t be afraid of adding lots of tags, and don’t be afraid of making tags too specific.

Templates

There are four MDC templates that are used to indicate that page (or a section on a page) applies to a specific version:

• {{template.Tb_minversion_header(N)}}: This template should be used when the content of the whole page or section applies to Thunderbird version N or higher.
• {{template.tb_minversion_inline(N)}}: This template should be used when an individual item in a list or a table appeared in Thunderbird version N.
• {{template.Tb_minversion_note(N, “The <code>foobar()</code> method works differently in Thunderbird N.”)}}: This template should be used when you need to insert a Thunderbird version-specific note into an article.
• {{template.Tb_minversion_section(N)}}: This template should be used when the content of a section applies to Thunderbird version N or higher.

So, for example, if you were to paste (as text ) the following into the MDC editor:

{{template.Tb_minversion_header(3.2)}}

{{template.Tb_minversion_section(3.2)}}

{{template.tb_minversion_inline(3.2)}}

{{template.Tb_minversion_note(3.2, "The <code>foobar()</code> method works differently in Thunderbird 3.2.")}}

…you would see this after saving the page:

Another useful template is {{template.draft(”")}}. This generates:

See the Template page on MDC for a complete list of MDC templates.

You can contribute a how-to, describe a new 3.0 feature or module or provide some content to the Thunderbird Overview page. For more information see my previous post  “RC 1 - Good Time for Docs“.

Feel free to write in whatever environment works best for you. If you want to write directly on MDC - great, go for it. If you prefer to brain-dump to a text file - that’s fine too. Just email it to me (jen at mozillamessaging.com) and I’ll edit and publish it.

Don’t have the time or inclination to write a full piece? No problem - send me an outline or a partial draft. These are helpful too - other people can come along and continue your work later.

Thanks in advance to everyone who helps out! If you need help or have questions, contact me at jen at mozillamessaging.com or “jenzed” on the Mozilla maildev IRC channel.

TB3 for Developers

• https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Thunderbird_3_for_developers
• Please review, add new stuff, expand existing stuff. Please use lots of links (to pages on MDC, if available, otherwise to MXR pages and relevant bugs).

New Modules

• Protovis, jQuery: what they are, how they’re available to add-on authors, and ideally a sample extension

How-Tos

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions/Thunderbird/HowTos
• Add a new one question or answer an existing one

Thunderbird Overview

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Extensions/Thunderbird/An_overview_of_the_Thunderbird_interface
• Look for the TODO markers

Shout if you need help - jen at mozillamessaging.com. Feel free to brain-dump into a text file and I’ll take care of the rest. (I know MDC is somewhat painful these days - don’t let that be an impediment.)

There are three MDC doc pages:

• Activity Manager overview
• Activity Manager interfaces
• Activity Manager examples

These docs were originally written by Emre. Please feel free to add more examples or expand the descriptions.

The original page had lots of blank topics - questions that people had asked but that no one has yet answered. These are now all listed in a section at the bottom of the page with a luridly pink background (in case these previously lacked sufficient prominence).

In content news, Ondrejd has extended how to “Add Option to Context Menu“, explaining how to support Thunderbird 2 and 3 in the same XPI.

Thanks for the contributions!

As an example of how it works, in my user area of MDC I am working on a new Thunderbird tutorial. It consists of several pages, named “Multi-page_1″, “Multi-page_2″, etc. It would be handy to have a quick list of the pages related to the tutorial, a list that is automatically updated when I add or delete pages. However, the tutorial pages are stored on the same hierarchical level as many other unrelated pages, which means the {{wiki.tree(”path to root”)}} Deki Wiki template is not useful.

To make use of Sheppy’s new MDC template, I simply add a tag (I used “new_tutorial”) to all the pages related to my tutorial. Then I specify the taggedsubpages template with my tag as an argument, like this:

{{Template.taggedsubpages("new_tutorial")}}

This gives me a bullet list of each of the sub-pages that have the “new_tutorial” tag.

This template is particularly useful because I think that one of the usability shortcomings of MDC is the fairly flat page hierarchy. Because we don’t have much structure, pages often lack the context that is provided, for example, by a breadcrumb path. The taggedsubpages template is a good tool both for working within a more structured hierarchy (as we move in that direction) and for dealing with the current lack of page hierarchy.

These new tools for error reporting and debugging should be a big help to Thunderbird extension developers. To make them easier to find, we’ve added a page on the Mozilla Developer Center that lists the tools (with a brief description).

What other error reporting and debugging tools do people use? Please feel free to add them to the new page.

Contributing to the Mozilla Developer Center is easy. First, get an account. Next, look for questions that need answers on the how-to page. Alternatively, write a larger article on the topic of your choice (such as the new address autocomplete article) or help out with the Thunderbird 3.0 documentation effort.

jetpack logo

Resident wise smart guy Andrew Sutherland has been playing with an implementation of Jetpack in Thunderbird 3. (Jetpack is an experimental technology from Mozilla Labs that provides an API that simplifies and enhances Firefox extension development.) With help from Standard8 (who tweaked Thunderbird’s content policy), Andrew wrote a couple of Jetpack-based extensions for Thunderbird. He has a blog post up that describes his examples and shows his code. It also provides a link to the experimental Thunderbirdified Jetpack code and instructions on how to access Jetpack from within Thunderbird.

As much as Jetpack is experimental for Firefox, this is extra-experimental for Thunderbird. However, like the rest of the Mozilla family, we’re excited about what Jetpack will bring to Thunderbird.

• a code snippet that shows how to add headers to outgoing messages
• a new how-to on adding options to a context menu

Also, the item “How do I get the message header for a message URI/URL?” has been rewritten.

Many thanks to the contributors for helping out the Thunderbird community! Remember, anyone can contribute - sign up for an account on the Mozilla Developer Center, then check out the topic ideas on the Thunderbird HowTos page (or add a new topic of your own).