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Ask HN: Oldest browser extension still maintained?
I'm doing some research on browser extensions and I wonder, what's the oldest browser extension still maintained today? (Also, the first extension ever created?)
I found that The Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick was first released on June 3, 2003[0] (when Mozilla FireFox was still known as Firebird) and it is still alive today as a web extension.
There are other ones?
[0]: https://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/history/firefox/
- 8draco8 8y agoWouldn't the first browser extension be something like some obscure 90s IE or Netscape toolbar? They was not only search bars but also email checkers, media controllers, notepads etc.
- achairapart 8y agoYes, the infamous "browser toolbars"[0] came first. Luckily they are long gone. I meant the first "modern", single purpose, browser extension. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_toolbar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_toolbar
- 8draco8 8y agoWell that's still will be something using NPAPI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI which means old. Back in the days browsers didn't have build in flash, java, divx player etc. so they was done by extensions aka plugins back in the days, so no, toolbars was not the only extensions in 90s. I guess there have to be some kind of extension that went from Netscape to Firefox etc. In there late 90s there was extension pack giving a lot of functionality to IE called MyIE (today known as Maxthon). You have to define what "modern extension" means to you because I have a feeling that you are looking just for oldest Firefox/Chrome extension.
- achairapart 8y agoYour feelings are right. By "modern" I mean single purpose extensions as we use them today, a concept basically introduced by Firefox and later adopted by Chrome. Not ways to extend the HTML functionality itself (NPAPI) nor general purpose grayware (browser toolbars).
- cimmanom 8y agoProbably something awful like the Alexa toolbar.