Making Your First Google Chrome Extension

tutorialzine.com

34 points·Tutorialzine··9 comments

It's very helpful, when learning how Chrome Extensions work, to download existing extensions, find where on your OS they are stored, then check out their code.

Except when they are Google extensions and the JS is obfuscated + compressed + encoded and therefore completely useless.

When you compare this with the much more complicated process in Firefox you cannot help but congratulate the Google guys for making this happen. Well done!

Absolutely agree. Making extensions for chrome is pure pleasure compared to Firefox. I think Google has a good strategy here..

No comparison between both. Can I change the URL bar in Google Chrome and add an icon or something to it? No! Can I change the refresh button to something else, add new functionality to the start page? No!

Google Chrome Extensions are just simple HTML5 apps in a small screen, that you access them through clicking an icon. So they can't be complicated. In Firefox it's a different thing, you have access to the whole browser and you can change anything. You can even integrate "DLL (C code)".

I'm pretty sure Chrome Extensions allow you to integrate DLLs into your extension. Maybe this isn't the same thing you were referring to?

http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/npapi.html

Maybe not, but on the other hand you can do more than your comment hint at.

I should know, I currently run both Adblock and Flashblock.

That's because Extensions can be GreaseMonkey Scripts, so they can change a page (or a specific page) HTML.

Chrome Extensions could alter/add page content before they integrated the ability to run GreaseMonkey Scripts.

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