Show HN: Chrome Extension Starter Kit and eBook | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Chrome Extension Starter Kit and eBook

chromeextensionkit.com

85 pointsw4bp00l16 comments

Nice work! Always exciting to see more products and offerings in the extensions space.

For Typescript aficionados, here’s an extension starter kit I built that powers https://getintention.com, https://hidefeed.com, and https://hidelikes.com with support for React, Typescript, Bootstrap, Babel, and Webpack out of the box (automatically works for Firefox as well):

https://github.com/dkthehuman/extension-starter-kit

Love your extensions

Thank you for making this cross-browser compatible! I'm definitely checking it out.

Amazing. Thank you.

My first response to this headline is "Just call it web extension starter kit, stop enabling the monoculture".

But then I remembered how the last time I went to build an internal web extension I couldn't even deploy to Firefox without uploading that internal extension to Mozilla. Left a really bad taste in my mouth.

Meanwhile deploying an internal web extension to Chrome was pretty straightforward, signing the extension was just another step in the CI process.

Yeah that's where it becomes a bit difficult, I find. Although the kit focuses on Chrome Extensions, you can actually convert the result to a Firefox extension with some minor tweaks (and I'm hoping to add some tools to further simplify this).

I had a similar experience with Firefox and I think for some, it's hard to justify that extra effort (from development all the way to publishing) given the current market share of Chrome in comparison.

My experience with https://github.com/wiringbits/cazadescuentos is totally different, I have had lots of headaches dealing with Chrome, while pushing updates on Firefox has been a smooth process.

On Firefox side of things, I prefer to upload my source code than to get blocked commonly with ambiguous or not clear reasons.

Honestly, if you think about it, all browser extension could be open sourced, it can certainly improve trust, and, they run on the client side anyway.

Just look on the hn posts this year, there has been lots of people complaining about the Chrome review process taking more than 3 weeks, and rejections without clear reasons.

Chrome extensions feel like the bash scripting of the 21st century. But as a primarily backend developer I'm learning Javascript at the same time I'm learning the browser at the same time I'm learning Chrome internals. This looks like it would really help with the latter 2.

Having just slogged through my second extension I could have really used this 2 months ago. Kudos

Thank you! Chrome extensions are definitely a great way to get familiar with Chrome's APIs and what's possible in the browser, as well as Javascript in general. I think the boilerplate and setup is a big barrier to entry for a lot of people since it seems quite tedious at first glance, so that was a big driving factor in creating this.

I feel you, for those reasons I ended up creating a [template](https://github.com/AlexITC/chrome-scalajs-template) for building browser extensions with scalajs, if typed languages are your way, I suggest you to give a try.

Looks promising, thanks for sharing.

For those looking for typed alternatives, I have enjoyed writing browser extensions in scalajs, and ended up building a template to get started easily on it: https://github.com/AlexITC/chrome-scalajs-template

Do developers really not care about Firefox anymore? Is it just the younger generation of devs who ignore it, or has everyone stopped?

I guess it's Mozilla's fault for dropping the ball on real community outreach...helping devs build stuff that other Firefox users will use. idk..I just hate seeing all these great tools released for Chrome that _should_ be able to be adapted for Firefox.

I do really prefer, and recommend the Firefox version on extension's [landing page](https://cazadescuentos.net/).

As I have commented other times, I found the Firefox review process quite smooth, and the Chrome one, quite annoying, I even considered to stop pushing updates to chrome.

On the tooling, Firefox has great tools, and even good guides on how to make the extension compatible with other browsers.

There's multiple examples of successful companies with their core product using a browser extension like honey, loom, grammarly etc.. yet the Google Chrome developer experience is seriously lacking, someone is going to be successful building Expo for browser extension dev !

I'd love to see sales stats shared for this. Would be a great case study for 1-person digital product sales.

That's something I'm interested in writing about as well. This is my first true digital product so I'm learning a lot along the way. I wrote a little bit about the Product Hunt launch results for it here: https://ryanfitzgerald.ca/blog/first-product-hunt/. Definitely more to come!

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