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For your next side project, make a browser extension

geoffreylitt.com

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Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#131

Post by Folcon »

derefr wrote: post #110
daveed wrote: post #104

I spent some time some productivity extensions, for gmail replies[0] and quick notetaking[1]. It was a lot of fun, but like other people have mentioned, porting to and working with manifest v3 is not as nice. I've noticed also that the way Google asks for permissions from the user is done in human-understandable, but worst-case language. For example, I think there was something where I wanted access to the current ta…

They're describing the worst-case thing someone could do with the privilege being granted, because they have no way of saying what the developer will do with the privilege. The way to make the prompt sound less scary, is to use finer-grained permissions where the worst-case thing someone could do is less scary. (Or, if there aren't any fine-grained permissions suited to doing your task — then propose some! The browse…

> (Or, if there aren't any fine-grained permissions suited to doing your task — then propose some! The browser vendors would love to get real feedback on the kinds of fine-grained hypothetical privileges that extensions authors would actually find useful. Otherwise they're stuck reading the source code of a small sample of extensions, and extrapolating general patterns of privilege-use from there.)

I'm curious, where are people supposed to do this? Is there actually a space / mechanism for this? Or is this a thing they would "like" to exist that there's not really an avenue for?

Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#133

Post by btown »

weaksauce wrote: post #116
CodexArcana wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your intentions are to only use the extension for yourself, why not just side load it?

side loaded extensions are not persisted every restart of the browser.

Wait, “load unpacked” doesn’t persist anymore?

Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#134

Post by lab »

nassimsoftware wrote: post #6

If I want to build a cross platform browser extension is there an easier way then having to write it twice?

The Plasmo framework has a couple feature that you can use to specify bundle specific behavior at the compilation level (via env or via file): https://docs.plasmo.com/framework/workflows/build#with-a-spe...

Disclaimer: I'm the author and maintainer of the framework.

Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#135

Post by lvass »

Animats wrote: post #28

No, don't. They're not that hard to code, but both Google and Mozilla keep making changes and then bitching at you through their app stores to change your thing. I recently dropped Chrome support on an add-on because 90% of the users were on Firefox. Since it blocked some ads, I figured Google would continue to whine, and it wasn't worth the hassle.

Use tampermonkey if possible. Or better yet, extend software that doesn't break, like Emacs.

Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#137

Post by techdragon »

strken wrote: post #119
qwertox wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this hurts as a developer, but using this language is just a way of being sincere to the user.

As a user it's not that helpful when extensions which inject stuff into the page (lots of them) all say they can access your history and browsing data. Even though it's actually true, it feels like a gap in the permissions model.

The problem is the gap is a mile wide. If you can see the current page url, you can see the next page URL and thus one page at a time you have the users browsing “history” from the moment they installed the extension, if you can run arbitrary JavaScript then you can check the back URL, you could potentially add some scope related restrictions to what injected JavaScript can do based on the permissions of the injecting extension but that still doesn’t stop the sort of “one page at a time discovery” of your private information and/or browser history.

Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#138

Post by weaksauce »

Alifatisk wrote: post #45

I try to stay away from browser extensions as much as I can, it will only bloat my browser even further. Firefox + Tampermonkey should be enough in my case. Is there anything a browser extension can do that Tampermonkey cannot?

blocking ads amongst many other browser native features. managing history/tabs/bookmarks/adding right click options/interacting with native applications on your computer for a few

Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#139

Post by weaksauce »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #121
weaksauce wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

side loaded extensions are not persisted every restart of the browser.

Chrome does keep side loaded extensions through restarts. Firefox doesn't unless you submit to Mozilla for signing. But once signed you can install from a file or even your own site.

I use firefox mainly and thought it was common behavior between the two

Re: For your next side project, make a browser extension

#140

Post by tommywg7 »

moneywoes wrote: post #57
tommywg7 wrote: post #27

Made one recently to put Google's trending page in an extension! Loved how quick you can build and release something usable. Check it out https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/trending-google-se...

Can you elaborate on the scheduling updates part? Does it just make a api request every x hours to google's api?

Google's RSS feed updates hourly. My app reads it on every load
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