For your next side project, make a browser extension
geoffreylitt.com
For your next side project, make a browser extension
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Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#2A lot of the most useful software I've made for myself has been browser extensions.
Spend too much time on Hacker News? I made an extension to freeze the front page so it updates once every 6 hours.
Spend too much time on Reddit? I made an extension requiring a password to be input for every page I visit.
Want to extensively filter LinkedIn jobs, and track which jobs you've applied to? I made an extension to apply very specific filtering to LinkedIn job postings, and to track my application status.
I do wish the Chrome extension API wasn't so annoying to use. Each time I make an extension I sort of dread the process since it's not a good developer experience, but I always find the result to be very useful in my day-to-day life.
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#3A lot of the most useful software I've made for myself has been browser extensions. Spend too much time on Hacker News? I made an extension to freeze the front page so it updates once every 6 hours. Spend too much time on Reddit? I made an extension requiring a password to be input for every page I visit. Want to extensively filter LinkedIn jobs, and track which jobs you've applied to? I made an extension to apply ve…
> I do wish the Chrome extension API wasn't so annoying to use. Each time I make an extension I sort of dread the process since it's not a good developer experience, but I always find the result to be very useful in my day-to-day life.
Sounds like the making of a good lifestyle SaaS product.
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#4I don't know how the Firefox extension store is, but publishing the extensions in the chrome extension store was really torture. They unpublished a plugin I published years ago. When I contacted support later, they said it was removed by mistake and republished it. and this situation continued for 4 5 times. Finally, I said I can't deal with it and stopped caring. Does this kind of thing still happen?
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#5A lot of the most useful software I've made for myself has been browser extensions. Spend too much time on Hacker News? I made an extension to freeze the front page so it updates once every 6 hours. Spend too much time on Reddit? I made an extension requiring a password to be input for every page I visit. Want to extensively filter LinkedIn jobs, and track which jobs you've applied to? I made an extension to apply ve…
I’d love to see how these things are architected. Do you have them on GitHub? Are there any boilerplates or anything you recommend to get started?
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#6If I want to build a cross platform browser extension is there an easier way then having to write it twice?
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#7A lot of the most useful software I've made for myself has been browser extensions. Spend too much time on Hacker News? I made an extension to freeze the front page so it updates once every 6 hours. Spend too much time on Reddit? I made an extension requiring a password to be input for every page I visit. Want to extensively filter LinkedIn jobs, and track which jobs you've applied to? I made an extension to apply ve…
FWIW, HN has settings to limit how much time you spend here.
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#8If I want to build a cross platform browser extension is there an easier way then having to write it twice?
Last time I wrote an extension (which is a while ago) the changes between the Chrome and Firefox version were minimal. And Edge takes unmodified Chrome extensions.
Obviously depends on the APIs you want, but a typical extension should be trivial to make compatible and package for both Chrome and Firefox.
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#9I don't know how the Firefox extension store is, but publishing the extensions in the chrome extension store was really torture. They unpublished a plugin I published years ago. When I contacted support later, they said it was removed by mistake and republished it. and this situation continued for 4 5 times. Finally, I said I can't deal with it and stopped caring. Does this kind of thing still happen?
Yes
Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension
#10I made one too!
HTTPS://HeadlampTest.com