Programming Firefox

Chapter 7. DOM Manipulation and Input/Output

Internet applications that involve user interaction beyond simple button pushing may eventually need to capture and create portions of documents. Although XUL provides a simple <textbox> tag for unformatted text entry, we have seen how more advanced widgets such as the <editor> allow for an interface experience with richer formatting and appearance options.

This chapter puts the finishing touches on our NewsSearch note-taking application and focuses on the techniques for extracting content from web sites and either saving or forwarding references to other users. These requirements involve the following topics:

• The use of selection, range, and insertion points to move selected document content between frames

• Accessing the local filesystem

• Dynamic creation of Document Object Model (DOM) nodes to allow addition of styling information

• Using event handlers to add programmatic logic to newly created document elements

• Adding interaction with the user’s email application

A Design Review

Our initial design review suggested a “copy and insert” type of application that would allow a user to select portions of a document and automatically build a citation that extracts the selected text, inserts it into the user’s notebook entry, and constructs the elements of the citation that are added to the end of the notebook entry. These elements include a quote, a numeric prefix annotation to point to the footnote reference, and the electronic reference itself. ...