How to write a C++ FireFox 3 plugin (not extension) on Windows?

Question

Could someone write-up a step by step guide to developing a C++ based plugin for FireFox on Windows?

The links and examples on http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/ are all old and inaccurate - the "NEW" link was added to the page in 2004.

The example could be anything, but I was thinking a plugin that lets JavaScript set the name and then displays "Hello {Name}". To show 2-way communication, it could have a property that returns the full salutation.

Though not as important, it would be nice if the plugin would work in Chrome too.

Answer 1

If you need something that works cross-browser (firefox and ie), you could look at firebreath: http://www.firebreath.org

For general "how to build a npapi plugin on windows" information, I have a few blog posts on the subject (linked to from some of the above sources as well)

http://colonelpanic.net/2009/03/building-a-firefox-plugin-part-one/

I really recommend firebreath, however, since we created it exactly for people who don't have time to do the months (literally) of research that it took us to figure out how it all works. If you don't want to use it as a basis for your plugin, though, you can still find a lot of good example code there.

should work on chrome, firefox, and safari on windows too! =]

good luck!