'Firefox Secrets' and 'Hacking Firefox' Published

Two new books about Mozilla Firefox have been published recently. Firefox Secrets by Cheah Chu Yeow was launched by SitePoint in July, while August saw the release of Mel Reyes' Hacking Firefox from Wiley.

Firefox Secrets weighs in at 297 pages, covering both basic Firefox features and more advanced tips and tricks for power users. There's also some content for Web developers, with guides to the JavaScript Console, DOM Inspector and Page Info tools. The book also includes a CD-ROM containing Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and some selected extensions and themes.

Author Cheah Chu Yeow is no newbie to Firefox: for several years he has run a weblog at blog.codefront.net (it appears to be down at the moment) where he often posts Mozilla-related items. Other people involved with the book will also be familiar to the Mozilla community too: Asa Dotzler served as the expert reviewer, while the technical editor was the late Nigel McFarlane.

SitePoint's Firefox Secrets site will give you some sample chapters in PDF format in exchange for your email address (while it took a while for our excerpts to arrive, we've only received one additional email since then and that was about the book). The PDF file features all of chapter two, Essential Browsing Features, and excerpts from chapters six and seven, Tips, Tricks, and Hacks and Web Development Nirvana. Other sections, such as the table of contents and the index, are also included, meaning that the sampler runs 119 pages in all.

About.com gave Firefox Secrets three stars, while Blogcritics.org also has a Firefox Secrets review and Lockergnome has an overview of Firefox Secrets. Finally, SearchEnterpriseLinux.com has an interview with Kevin Yank, a technical director at SitePoint who worked on the book (thanks to roseman for the link).

Hacking Firefox, which carries the subtitle More Than 150 Hacks, Mods, and Customizations, is a meatier volume, running to 430 pages. Firmly aimed at advanced users, the book covers topics such as tweaking the Firefox user interface, improving performance and creating extensions. While Mel Reyes is listed as the author of this book, several other members of Mozilla community contributed, including extension developer Alex Sirota (creator of FoxyTunes) and prolific theme author Aaron Spuler. The foreword was written by Blake Ross. Mel runs hackingfirefox.com, a companion site to the book, and Alex has his own page about Hacking Firefox.

The Wiley Hacking Firefox site has a 14 page sample chapter to download in PDF format (it's the first chapter, Hacking Firefox Boot Camp). The table of contents, index and the code that accompanies the book can also be obtained. Hacking Firefox carries the ExtremeTech branding, so it's no surprise that the popular technology site has two excerpts online. The first, Hacking Firefox Extensions, has technical details about how extensions work, while the second, Hacking Firefox: Speed Up Your Browser, mainly focuses on tweaking hidden networking preferences to improve performance. Thanks to roseman for links to both.

Publishers are currently scrambling to fill the bookshelves of Mozilla users. Mozilla project hosting site mozdev maintains a list of Mozilla books, which includes three new books set for release this month: Mozilla Firefox: Introductory Concepts and Techniques, Firefox and Thunderbird (an O'Reilly tome) and Pro Firefox Extension and Application Development. Blake Ross's book, Firefox for Dummies, is due for publication in October.

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