Firefox Lightbeam

This is the web extension version of the Firefox Lightbeam add-on for visualizing HTTP requests between websites in real time.

The Firefox Lightbeam extension by Mozilla is a key tool for Mozilla to educate the public about privacy.

Quick Start

Clone the repository

Note This repository uses a submodule to allow some third party requests. To ensure the submodule is cloned along with this repository, use a modified clone command: git clone --recursive https://github.com/mozilla/lightbeam-we.git

Run the web extension

There are a couple ways to try out this web extension:

1. Open Firefox and load about:debugging in the URL bar.

   • Click the Load Temporary Add-on button and select the manifest.json file within the directory of this repository.
   • You should now see the Lightbeam icon on the top right bar of the browser.
   • Click the Lightbeam icon to launch the web extension.

2. Install the web-ext tool, change into the src directory of this repository, and type web-ext run.

   • This will launch Firefox and install the extension automatically.
   • This tool gives you some additional development features such as automatic reloading.

Development Guide

Download dependencies

Run npm run build.

Update the submodule

To manually update the submodule at any time during development, run git submodule update.

Testing

Run npm run test to check that everything is OK.

• If you have installed eslint globally, you will have to install globally the following eslint plugins too:
  • eslint-plugin-json
  • eslint-plugin-mocha
• Test suites include lint and unit testing. You can individually run lint or unit tests using the following commands:
  • npm run lint:eslint
  • npm run test:karma

Eslint is used for linting. Karma, Mocha & Chai are used for unit testing. Additionally the test suites are run on the Travis service providing continuous integration support.