Thanks for considering supporting the development of Session Alive!
There are 2 ways to contribute to Session Alive:
If at any time you need help you can always open an Issue on the GitHub page and someone will help you get started.
Also, if you have found an error or bug, please create an issue on GitHub. This is the fastest way to get it fixed and helps greatly to improve Session Alive for everyone. Lot's of misbehavior are caused by simple mistakes and can be fixed easily, but only once they are known to exist.
> GitHub main page > GitHub issues page
If you want to help translate Session Alive into your language, that's awesome. The simplest way to get translations in is to create a GitHub issue and suggest your translations.
Alternatively, you can also download the Session Alive repository and add your translations to the source files, and then make a pull request. For this approach, here a some notes to guide you:
First, all translations are in the folder called _locales. For each language there is a separate directory that contains the a file called messages.json. This file contains all translations for a given language.
If the language you want to contribute to already exists, but some translations are missing or you think something could be translated better, open the messages.json for you language and look for the string(s) that you want to modify/add and replace the existing string in its message field.
If you want to contribute in a language that is currently not present at all, this is possible too. First, create a folder with the appropriate language abbreviation in the same folder as the other language folders are in. If you are not sure what the abbreviation for your language is, they can be found here. Then create a file called messages.json in the newly created folder. In it copy and paste all existing translated strings from the messages.json (preferably) from the English (called en) language folder's message.json file. You can also copy from a different language if you are more familiar it.
From there you can start replacing the existing strings in the "message: " fields.
If you want to contribute a feature or other things such as code organization, here is what to look out for:
The most complex parts of the Add-on are the Background Script (background.js) and the Content Script (inject/cs.js).
background.js This file has 14 functions. Main functions are:
handleMessage()handleInitializeMsg()handleRunningRules()
handleMessage() is called every time a message is received. The event in the message indicates why the message is sent.
handleInitializeMsg() is called from handleMessage() when a initialize event message is received.
handleRunningRules() is called from handleInitializeMsg() to check for running rules.
inject/cs.js This file has 10 functions. Main functions are:
init()handleResponse()scheduleRule()updateCounter()
init() is called every time a page is initialized. The Session Alive elements are created in the page and waits for message from the background script.
handleResponse() is called every time a message is received. The response message and run command in the message indicates what rule to run on the page.
scheduleRule() is called from handleResponse() to schedule a background ajax request loop.
updateCounter() is called from handleResponse() to schedule a foreground auto-reload loop.