How to localize the strings of a Firefox extension

Written by Goofy

Wednesday, 28 September 2005

Sometimes the extensions we translate have no locale folder, so we have to fumble here and there looking for strings... But we can all the same create a "locale" folder which will be useful to translators and to spread the extension worldwide... Let us take the extension anidisable by Harry Patsis as an example
1 Open anidisable.xpi	with Izarc or 7-Zip ...
2 The chrome folder includes another zipped file that we open too...
3 Bad luck ! There is no locale folder in ...
4 Well then... we just create one !	right-click on "New folder" then rename
5 And we insert the following contents : one en-US subfolder (supposing we are making an english locale of course) with these two files inside : - anidisable.dtd - contents.rdf	right-click on "New text file" then rename
6 Now let us have a look in the file content/anidisable.xul, we are discovering strings to localize. These are words that will be displayed to the final user. Notice : we shall leave the word "Anidisable" untranslated, because it is recommended to leave the extension name as it is.	Open with a text-editor such as Pspad or Jedit ... Which text strings can we localize ? Click here for tips
7 This is the important step ! Now we are about to replace messages between brackets by : & followed by a sufficiently explicit variable name, ending with a ;
8 Now let us go in the en-US locale, in the anidisable.dtd file. With much care for the syntax (see example on the right), here we put variables names and their english "equivalent" .
9 Let's go back to the anidisable.xul file, and right on the second line we add this line that tells the extension the precise address where to find localized elements...
10 We make the same operation again - variables substitutions- for the strings in the file : anidisablesettings.xul following the steps 7 8 9	...and do not forget UTF-8 encoding !
11 See below what is to write in the locale/ contents.rdf file. It is the same for every extension, except of course for the extension name itself. To spare you the pain of writing down the whole thing, you can just copy/paste from this plain text file....

12 Another important point : if we want the extension to take our locale folders into account, you must indicate the address right from the beginning and add this yellow line in the install.rdf file.
It is done ! All you've got to do now is : re-zip and get a new .xpi test how your extension works send the author your proposed localized version. * If you want to train and compare, see anidisable extension original version / localized version In this last version, the initial description is localized too : see how to do it here . And if you wish to localize strings included in a javascript (*.js) file, it is there.