How does XUL (specifically firefox) statusbar positioning work?

Question

When I go to create my status bar overlay, I note that I can include a position attribute. I want to be able to dynamically change this attribute. Near as I can tell, just using JavaScript to find the element and change the position attribute doesn't move the status bar panel around on the status bar.

Any suggestions as to how to accomplish this?

Thanks, Nathan

Answer 1

You're right, changing the position doesn't seem to have any effect; I assume the XUL engine is only looking at it when it inserts the node into the main document's DOM tree.

Looks like DOM element manipulation stuff will work.

var nodeToMove = ...;
var parent = nodeToMove.parentNode;
parentNode.removeChild(nodeToMove);
parentNode.insertBefore(nodeToMove, someOtherNode);

would take the node from anywhere and stick it before someOtherNode.

Answer 2

Hmm, I could probably craft a solution based on that. But what's the point of having the position attribute if it doesn't work?

Answer 3

Hi Nathan,

There's plenty of XUL documentation online and also on mozilla's site
and it's surprisingly well organised sometimes :)
You can have a look here for an example of a XUL toolbar written as an extension to firefox.
It contains information about positioning in the attributes of the tags.
The XUL tutorial here and the XUL reference come in handy when trying to figgure out something like this.