Chrome Gets Plugins: How to Write a Chrome Extension in Three Easy Steps

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/write-chrome-extension/

by anuraggoel • 17 years ago

64 31 17 years ago

Still doesn't offer any real extension functionality; it's more a glorified, built-in version of Greasemonkey. This precludes such popular and useful Firefox extensions such as Firebug, Foxmarks, AdBlock, or just about any other extension besides Greasemonkey itself...

scotth3• 17 years ago

I'm not sure that's entirely true.

I can imagine AdBlock, as well as other plugins that deal mainly with the DOM, as entirely possible. I mean, how much does AdBlock really do? Grabs a list of blacklisted URLs (with wildcards), matches applicable elements in the DOM, and removes them.

AdBlock may prevent these requests from being issued at all, but that isn't to say you can't implement something similar in a Greasemonkey-like environment.

nuclear_eclipse3• 17 years ago

The whole point of AdBlock is that it does block the actualy requests in the first place. Why should I have to download 800k of ads for a 200k webpage, and open myself to adware tracking cookies? Removing them from DOM after they've been downloaded is not a proper solution to me at all...

andreyf3• 17 years ago

You're assuming that Chrome extensions can do cross-domain XHR... which I'm not sure about.

kaens• 17 years ago

The thing is that for browser extensions, I want hooks into the UI (even if fairly limited), not just modification of page content.

Hopefully chrome moves in this direction. I realize that it's a really hard thing to get right, especially in a browser.

snprbob86• 17 years ago

Read the design document on the _real_ extension functionality which is coming soon:

http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensio...

I'd expect announcements in May:

http://code.google.com/events/io/

wvenable• 17 years ago

A lot of Firefox's bloat comes from the XUL interface. It's their cross-platform GUI which is written in XML and Javascript. It's what allows add-ons to reach in and modify some very deep elements of the browser. For example, I run the Tab Mix Plus extension which radically changes the operation of tabs.

However, XUL and Javascript is a very heavy-weight way of doing things. Chrome and other browsers have a native UI. That is partially what makes Chrome a light-weight browser. It also means that the deep level of cross platform add-on's available for Firefox will not be possible for Chrome in it's current state.

I've read the proposals for expanding Chrome extensions and it sounds like they want to go a similar route to XUL. It probably won't be as low-level because they'll want to keep their native UI code. That will help Chrome to provide some more complex plugins with their own UI but still won't allow for some of the more radical and interesting plugins available for Firefox.

gregp• 17 years ago

http://www.w3.org/TR/xbl/

Check out the editor of XBL - for those not familiar, XBL is what XUL is built on top of as well as all the widgets you see in the mozilla platform (ff/tb etc), including all your html controls. I think if google went this route, they are definitely picking up where netscape left off and where moz foundation has limped along with, ie. building a platform around the browser.

jballanc• 17 years ago

Chrome is WebKit, WebKit has an amazing inspector/Firebug clone. In using both, I actually prefer the WebKit inspector. I haven't used Chrome yet, so I'm not sure what magical incantation is required to activate the inspector (in Safari it's part of the "Develop" menu"), but it should be there.

andreyf3• 17 years ago

I'm not sure what your point is, but Chrome doesn't use WebKit for JS, it uses Google's internally developed V8 engine, so don't expect JS to always run identically in Safari and Chrome.

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

Greasemonkey-esque functionality is the main thing I've been missing in Chrome, so this looks appealing.

catch232• 17 years ago

well the cool thing about greasemonkey was that you could do a little more than just inject javascript code... for example, you could make cross domain xhr calls as well, and it did so by jumping out of the security sandbox to do this. I'm not so sure if it will be possible in chrome...

Semiapies2• 17 years ago

Fair enough; I've never had call to do that in my own GM scripts, but I can easily see the use.

m_eiman• 17 years ago

It'd be nice if we could use the correct terms for these things. I know that I'm probably picking nits, but there's a difference between extensions and plugins.

My simplified definition: plugins run native code, extensions run Javascript. Flash if a plugin, Firebug in an extension.

extension2• 17 years ago

The terms plugin, extension, add-on, widget, drop-in, applet, cram-thru, etc. have all historically been used interchangeably to mean little more than "lack of modular design".

Don't expect actual extensibility from Chromium any time soon. If they can't be bothered to even plan for platform independence (http://dev.chromium.org/developers/browser-bootstrapping) then they don't have the design wherewithall to retrofit a C++ app with a comprehensive extension mechanism.

My hope is that a Google-independent fork will start that extracts the nifty subsystems in Chromium, like process level isolation, and uses them to build a more thoughtfully architected browser/platform.

statictype3• 17 years ago

1) If they had planned for platform independence, they wouldn't have been able to release anything for a long time.

2) Since Chrome relies heavily on process isolation, I would think that a lot of the architecture of the browser is tied to the platform. Even the html rendering pipeline (based on WebKit) runs out-of-band and the rendered bitmap is send to the browser window via IPC. (I don't work on the team but from my understanding of someone's comments, this is how it roughly works)

3) Regarding extensibility, I agree that I doubt Google is going to provide much extensibility of the actual browser chrome. Google's interests are in the web sites themselves and as such, the greasemonkey-like extensions are what they're probably going to promote. They want to hide the browser container as much as possible and move the focus to the web page inside it.

icefox• 17 years ago

I can't wait to see how many people pick the unique number 00123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456

blasdel• 17 years ago

It's never a good idea to put valid UUIDs in tutorials, there's just too many copy-pasters out there.

aboodman• 17 years ago

Having to create an ID manually is temporary.

When complete, the ID is going to be a hash of the extension's public key, and extension content will be signed with the key. So there won't be conflicts (unless you share your private key).

est• 17 years ago

Does anyone know how to add a right click menu item so I can invoke a external download tool for URLs?

dpeq• 17 years ago

Anyone switched to the developer-channel version of Chrome yet?

mapleoin• 17 years ago

can somebody write a plugin to port Chrome to other OSes?

Note: i'm being sarcastic

Chrome Gets Plugins: How to Write a Chrome Extension in Three Easy Steps

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