XPCOM Component Viewer

cview...

The XPCOM component viewer allows you to navigate through the components and interfaces included in your Mozilla based browser. If you don't know what XPCOM components and interfaces are, this tool probably won't be of much use to you.

Install...
The latest version of cview is 0.6.4, and was created on Sept 4, 2002. You will need to be running a Mozilla based browser that is recent relative to this date. I'd suggest Mozilla 1.0, or Netscape 7.0. Click the button below to install it on your browser.
Install cview

To run cview you will need to install it, restart your broswer, and select Tasks->Tools->Component Viewer.

Install tip for Linux users...
If you're running some *NIX o/s, and you installed your browser as the root user, you will have to be root to install cview. In addition, you may have to chmod the cview.jar file to allow it to be readable by everyone. The jar file should be located in the chrome subdirectory of your browser's install point. (These are installer issues.)

Here's a list of what you can do with cview so far...

• List components and interfaces whose names match a regular expression.
• List interfaces supported by a given component.
• Perform an lxr filename or text search on an interface name.

Limitations, and how cview works...
cview figures out what interfaces a component supports by creating an instance of that component, and calling the QueryInterface method on it for every known interface. Because it is implemented in JavaScript, cview cannot discover unscriptable interfaces.

Notes on stability...
cview is 100% JavaScript and XUL, and so it shouldn't cause any stability problems in an ideal world. Unfortunatley, taken as a whole, the current collection of XPCOM component implementations is not ideal. cview creates and destroys components when the interface list is set to "view supported interfaces" mode. Some components are not designed to be created or destroyed from JavaScript. If cview probes one of these components, it may cause your browser to crash. Don't use cview if this is a problem for you.

The Future...
If InterfaceInfo records were made scriptable, cview could be much more powerful. If you're bored and want to spend your time making the Mozilla codebase even cooler, that'd be a great thing to do. :)

Here's a screenshot of cview in action...