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Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

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Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#31

Post by thysultan »

freediver wrote: post #27

We are working on a new native macOS browser based on Webkit with native web extension API support built in. We have uBlock origin and many others extensions working already. By doing this we get best of both worlds - performance and energy use of Webkit and extensions from chrome/firefox. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/7V8sfyX We are open for beta testers. Please email me if interested with short background and area of…

Yes!

uBlock origin is the biggest thing keeping me from going to Safari, that and the Stylus extension(or something like it).

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#32

Post by kitsunesoba »

thysultan wrote: post #31
freediver wrote: post #27

We are working on a new native macOS browser based on Webkit with native web extension API support built in. We have uBlock origin and many others extensions working already. By doing this we get best of both worlds - performance and energy use of Webkit and extensions from chrome/firefox. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/7V8sfyX We are open for beta testers. Please email me if interested with short background and area of…

Yes! uBlock origin is the biggest thing keeping me from going to Safari, that and the Stylus extension(or something like it).

Cascadea is a decent Stylus stand-in for Safari, though it isn't free (currently costs US$2.99).

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#33

Post by freediver »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #28
freediver wrote: post #27

We are working on a new native macOS browser based on Webkit with native web extension API support built in. We have uBlock origin and many others extensions working already. By doing this we get best of both worlds - performance and energy use of Webkit and extensions from chrome/firefox. Screenshot: https://ibb.co/7V8sfyX We are open for beta testers. Please email me if interested with short background and area of…

Interesting, is this planned to be an open source project?

Yes eventually. We are currently laser focused on getting the hardest part of the work done. The webextensions API layer is pretty substantial and had to be rebuilt from scratch on top of Webkit core which is a giant project on its own. It has been two years in the making and we are at about 70% webextensions api coverage with a small but passionate team.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#36

Post by amelius »

burtonator wrote: post #29

So this is is a MAJOR flaw with WebExtension design. Each uses a separate URI scheme. So Chrome uses chrome-extension: Firefox uses firefox-extension: ... etc. which means web extensions for Firefox won't work with Google Firebase because they only support chrome-extension. Why the heck isn't it web-extension: ???

It could be, if you submit an RFC for a common format.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#37

Post by LinguaBrowse »

floatingatoll wrote: post #30

The most popular web extensions are those that deprive sites of direct and indirect revenue, which necessarily means they can’t charge for the service or their userbase would revolt and steal their rule sets (which is easy to do for a web extension). Having to pay money for such things goes against the grain of those users, and the sort of breakage that people think is acceptable for content blockers isn’t quite as a…

> What browser extensions other than content blockers exist, that have any significant user base and value, that isn’t already met by better and more capable native apps on macOS and iOS, and somehow could charge people money for the extension with their willing cooperation?

Language-learning extensions are reasonably popular, though most aren’t making the big bucks.

Grammarly is probably one winner of note.

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#38

Post by [deleted] »

eznzt wrote: post #25
Nextgrid wrote: post #8

In addition to the money argument raised in another comment, the Apple development experience is a major annoyance when all you need is a couple lines of JS. I have an extension idea; it's literally a single line of JS. However, to get it into Safari, I need to create a (useless, and empty) Mac app with a specific configuration in Xcode that'll allow it to appear in the "extensions" list in Safari. Then I need to dea…

> I have an extension idea; it's literally a single line of JS. That's better suited as a userscript.

[deleted]

Re: Safari 14 added WebExtensions support, so where are the extensions?

#40

Post by jenwkejnwjkef »

nojito wrote: post #23
jenwkejnwjkef wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The $99/year is big enough to pretty much block out all hobby devs and open-source projects, so what's left are generally commercial and closed-source. Apple says that they do their own vetting of extensions, but I don't trust Apple to prevent extensions from reading my browsing history, especially considering spyware extensions like Honey are served on the App Store without warning.

> especially considering spyware extensions like Honey are served on the App Store without warning. You have to explicitly grant permissions as a user for safari extensions.

Yes but every extension that does anything remotely interesting needs access to "your entire browsing history," which is a comment much scarier than it usually is. The truth is that it is impossible for a computer to distinguish malicious javascript from useful javascript, meaning all trust and verification needs to come from the user.
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