Build your own browser extensions for Google Chrome

posted Sep 8th 2009 4:00pm by Mike Szczys
filed under: downloads hacks, google hacks

[Ryan] posted a writeup on developing extensions for Google Chrome. The extension system utilizes HTML with a JavaScript API which is still sparsely documented. After taking us through his twitter bar extension project, he concludes that the Chrome extensions are not nearly as versatile as what we’re used to seeing with Firefox. That being said, this is a move in the right direction for the young browser.

[related: Google Chrome roundup]

Comments [6]

tagged: api, chrome, extensions, firefox, twitter

6 Responses to Build your own browser extensions for Google Chrome

matt says:

September 8, 2009 at 6:43 pm

Good to know. I’ll get started!

first

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Jason Knight says:

September 9, 2009 at 2:22 am

Sounds more like how Opera widgets work, or Opera user javascript (which is what greasemonkey and trixie are ripoffs of) than browser extensions.

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overslacked says:

September 9, 2009 at 8:33 am

@Jason – Google’s V8 engine is, I believe, a lot more comprehensive than what you see in Firefox, and I suspect that’s why they’re providing access through Javascript. I suspect what we’ll see is a lot more Chrome V8 templates created, giving a lot of surface area for Javascript extensions, once they get basic functionality out.

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Anonymous says:

September 12, 2009 at 2:25 pm

Jason Knight, actually, Greasmonkey was released first (version 0.2.5, April 2005), before Opera 8.0 b3 which introduced that feature. Greasmonkey was apparently directly inspired by a site-specific extension (see http://wiki.greasespot.net/Greasemonkey) in 2004. But Opera’s support had been in production for the year previous to release, and had been in discussion at Opera since 2002 (see http://operawiki.info/UserJS#interlude).

So, Opera was working on the feature itself longer, but Firefox was designed to use Javascript under the hood, so it was simpler to implement and got it first.

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Build Your First Website says:

September 30, 2009 at 6:36 am

I know nothing about Google Chrome, and now I saw n the news today something called Google Wave…what is that if you know?

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pakhaxors says:

March 22, 2010 at 12:40 am

google always amazed us with their new products google chorome is good browser and its also good if we can add own extension

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