Can an amateur coder do this to Mozilla?

Factual Questions
1

I have a decent working knowledge of programming…nothing anyone would want to hire me for, but enough that I have fun with it. I’d like to add two features to my copy of Mozilla: an option on the right-click menu that would “go to address <highlighted text>” and one that would “search Google for <highlighted text>”. My question is, could someone of my level of knowledge make additions to the Mozilla source code for features like this, or would I have to be a professional-grade programmer? Do I need UNIX? Has anyone ever edited their Mozilla source code before?

Adam

2

And, of course, by “anyone”, I mean “any doper”. :wink:

Adam

3

Well, i don’t know about your first modification, but my version of Firefox (1.5.0.1) already has your second feature.

I can highlight text, then right-click it, and the context menu will contain a selection that says “Seach Web for [text].” Selecting this sends the text to Google search and the results page opens.

4

Hey cool!

You are the winner in today’s version of “What I learned today”.

Now back to work. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

I haven’t created one myself, but it sounds like you want to make an extension.
Here’s a page that seems to show the basics.

There are also things called Bookmarklets that use javascript in bookmarks to accomplish stuff.
There’s one here that can do almost what you want.

6

Here is an extension that should do what you want it to for question one.