Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

blog.nparashuram.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 33 posts

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#21

Post by mathieuh »

swang wrote: post #8

I know this is off-topic but I need to rant against Google/Blogger's mobile version of their platform since I keep running into it whenever I'm browsing HN on my iPhone. When I view this article on an iPhone 4S, Blogger adds in a swipe feature that goes to the next article (or previous article if you swipe left). This "feature" is driving me nuts because there are tables that break the screen on the iPhone where I ca…

Same problem, there must be something weird with the way I scroll because I keep changing article when I'm just scrolling up and down.

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#22

Post by andrewmunn »

benologist wrote: post #16
swang wrote: post #8

I know this is off-topic but I need to rant against Google/Blogger's mobile version of their platform since I keep running into it whenever I'm browsing HN on my iPhone. When I view this article on an iPhone 4S, Blogger adds in a swipe feature that goes to the next article (or previous article if you swipe left). This "feature" is driving me nuts because there are tables that break the screen on the iPhone where I ca…

Every attempt I've seen to turn something into a special mobile version has failed horribly. Google Images is absolute, pure shit, I literally get up and find my laptop when I have to use Images because they've made it so horrible to use. And of course OnSwipe lol. I don't want an "ipad" experience, I just want the website.

If you have a moment, I'd love to know what you dislike about Google Images for iPad. I worked on the product when I was an intern at Google. I'm sorry it's causing you frustration :(

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#23

Post by benologist »

andrewmunn wrote: post #22
benologist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every attempt I've seen to turn something into a special mobile version has failed horribly. Google Images is absolute, pure shit, I literally get up and find my laptop when I have to use Images because they've made it so horrible to use. And of course OnSwipe lol. I don't want an "ipad" experience, I just want the website.

If you have a moment, I'd love to know what you dislike about Google Images for iPad. I worked on the product when I was an intern at Google. I'm sorry it's causing you frustration :(

#1 hate is I can't open images or pages in new tabs, if I tap and hold on the outer thumb I just get the option to save that thumb, if I tap and hold on the link in the preview I get nothing at all. That makes browsing multiple images painful.

#2 is to view the meta data that's "free" on normal GI you have to click through to the preview and start downloading it and other images at a larger size. Images has lots of shitty, spammy websites gaming the results as well as poor versions of images available elsewhere larger, seeing that info was always useful to me.

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#25

Post by andrewmunn »

benologist wrote: post #23
andrewmunn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a moment, I'd love to know what you dislike about Google Images for iPad. I worked on the product when I was an intern at Google. I'm sorry it's causing you frustration :(

#1 hate is I can't open images or pages in new tabs, if I tap and hold on the outer thumb I just get the option to save that thumb, if I tap and hold on the link in the preview I get nothing at all. That makes browsing multiple images painful. #2 is to view the meta data that's "free" on normal GI you have to click through to the preview and start downloading it and other images at a larger size. Images has lots of s…

Thanks for the feedback! Both of your grievances are legitimate issues. The reason why we didn't support those use cases on iPad is because they are power user features.

Pro tip: If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can view the desktop site by hitting "Classic". Happy Googling :)

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#26

Post by 8ig8 »

andrewmunn wrote: post #25
benologist wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#1 hate is I can't open images or pages in new tabs, if I tap and hold on the outer thumb I just get the option to save that thumb, if I tap and hold on the link in the preview I get nothing at all. That makes browsing multiple images painful. #2 is to view the meta data that's "free" on normal GI you have to click through to the preview and start downloading it and other images at a larger size. Images has lots of s…

Thanks for the feedback! Both of your grievances are legitimate issues. The reason why we didn't support those use cases on iPad is because they are power user features. Pro tip: If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can view the desktop site by hitting "Classic". Happy Googling :)

When I scroll to the bottom of the page on my iPad, Google _conveniently_ loads more images. It's like a cruel joke.

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#27

Post by rohitnair »

zbuc wrote: post #14
jaredsohn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is true that Firefox's extension mechanism is more powerful than Chrome or Opera. However, some of the things that you list (such as calling functions in system libraries and performing raw IO) can be done in Chrome and I think in Opera by creating an NPAPI extension in C/C++. Edit: I realize it is harder to write it this way. It is also harder to write Firefox extensions in C/C++ instead of in their JavaScript AP…

NPAPI is difficult . I couldn't find a working sample project(though I only spent a couple hours) last year when I wanted to try it out. It sounds like Google is working on a new plugin architecture in JS + HTML that will support the deep interactivity of NPAPI, so we'll see...

Google already uses the new Pepper Plugin API[1] in the current versions of Chrome. They've also switched projects like Native Client to use this new API instead of NPAPI. PPAPI definitely seems better based on my experience of writing a few Native Client modules.

[1] - http://code.google.com/p/ppapi/

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#28

Post by Suan »

andrewmunn wrote: post #22
benologist wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every attempt I've seen to turn something into a special mobile version has failed horribly. Google Images is absolute, pure shit, I literally get up and find my laptop when I have to use Images because they've made it so horrible to use. And of course OnSwipe lol. I don't want an "ipad" experience, I just want the website.

If you have a moment, I'd love to know what you dislike about Google Images for iPad. I worked on the product when I was an intern at Google. I'm sorry it's causing you frustration :(

On my Android 2.3 phone with stock browser, when I tap an image, the image _below_ it gets highlighted, even though the correct image is opened - horribly confusing.

Also when an image is being viewed, you can't swipe to go to the previous/next image. I believe this works on the iPhone.

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#29

Post by japherwocky »

tonetheman wrote: post #10

Last time I looked it was a maze trying to figure out FF extensions. A painful long learning curve. I wrote my first chrome/safari extension about 5 mins after I read the intro.

figuring out how to sign a FF extension properly without an https cert was one of the most difficult things i've accomplished in my programming career. :(

Re: Writing Browser Extensions - Comparing Firefox, Chrome and Opera

#30

Post by simonster »

jaredsohn wrote: post #5
simonster wrote: post #3

This is really just about writing a browser extension that injects code into a page and does nothing else. Firefox extensions can do all sorts of things (modify the browser UI, call functions in system libraries, create protocol handlers, perform raw IO) that other environments don't permit. Many of these things probably can't be done through Jetpack/Add-on SDK, but, for better or for worse, Firefox's extension mecha…

It is true that Firefox's extension mechanism is more powerful than Chrome or Opera. However, some of the things that you list (such as calling functions in system libraries and performing raw IO) can be done in Chrome and I think in Opera by creating an NPAPI extension in C/C++. Edit: I realize it is harder to write it this way. It is also harder to write Firefox extensions in C/C++ instead of in their JavaScript AP…

You don't need to write Firefox extensions in C/C++ to do raw IO. The same interfaces Firefox uses to implement sockets and streams are accessible by JavaScript. I wrote a web server in ~200 lines of code.

You also don't need to write C/C++ to call functions in system libraries in Firefox. js-ctypes (libffi under the hood) works quite well, although converting headers to js-ctypes function definitions can't be automated IIRC, which makes it a bit of a pain.

Post reply on HN