Add HTML Elements to XUL Addons

By  on  

I've been working on a new addon at Mozilla which isn't anywhere near finished so I wont bother telling you what it's meant to do...because it could change at any moment.  Since this is my first real addon, it's been a struggle, but that's a good thing -- it means I'm learning a ton.  One problem I ran into was trying to get a checkbox (INPUT) element within the addon via JavaScript -- nothing was displaying.

After a bit of research and guesswork, I figured out what I was doing wrong -- I was using the wrong document method to create the element:

var input = document.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml", "input");

Using document.createElementNS with the proper namespace resulted in my checkbox displaying in all of its glory.  It's beautiful square, checked glory.  Firefox addons can be created in a number of ways so if you're looking to create your own and you aren't seeing HTML elements correctly, keep this solution in mind!

Recent Features

  • By
    Designing for Simplicity

    Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...

  • By
    Camera and Video Control with HTML5

    Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs.  Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop.  One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a Simple Dojo Accordion

    Let's be honest:  even though we all giggle about how cheap of a thrill JavaScript accordions have become on the web, they remain an effective, useful widget.  Lots of content, small amount of space.  Dojo's Dijit library provides an incredibly simply method by which you can...

  • By
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

Discussion

  1. Reminded me of my initial days with JavaScript David! I also made the same namespace errors and then wondered for hours, what went wrong!

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!