11 ms·

A Brief History of Browser Extensibility

34 points by Sujan 5y ago

adrianh 5y ago
This brought back some memories. In July 2004, I made a Firefox extension to "fix" a bad redesign of the website All Music Guide (my blog post: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/all-music-guide/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/all-music-guide/). To my knowledge this was the first instance of a site-specific browser extension. Aaron Boodman saw that idea and took it much farther by developing Greasemonkey, which made the idea more general and more powerful.
- tschiller 5y ago
  That's a very cool bit of history! Adding it to my list of references/updates to make to the blog post
zerkten 5y ago
No mention of Binary Behaviors (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2001/january/cutting-edge-binary-behaviors-in-internet-explorer-5-5 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2001/...), but I guess these could go in the ActiveX bucket. They are a bit more interesting than plug-ins when you consider where some of the current innovation is happening with front end web development and standards.
buescher 5y ago
I was hoping there'd be more of the oddball dead-ends like the python Grail browser or the tcl plugin for Netscape.
bigbillheck 5y ago
Disappointed but not surprised that Chimera (the original one) wasn't mentioned: https://web.archive.org/web/20110725164212/http://www.chimera.org/one/overview.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110725164212/http://www.chimer...
tschiller 5y ago
Author of the blog post here! If you comment with corrections/milestones I missed, I'll try to incorporate them I'll also be attempting to update the augmented browsing/browser extension Wikipedia page in the coming weeks
gnicholas 5y ago
> One notable startup I’ve come across is Insight Browser, an iOS browser that allows users to build and share simple extensions. I've worked with the Insight [1] folks (YC W19, I think?) to port my Chrome extension [2] to their platform. They made it super easy, and I'd recommend others give them a try. Not every extension makes sense on iOS, but for those that do, this can be a slick way to finally reach iOS users. Hopefully Insight can popularize mobile extensions and generate some competition in the mobile browser space! 1: https://www.insightbrowser.com https://www.insightbrowser.com 2: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifjafammaookpiajfbedmacfldaiamgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj...

34 points by Sujan 5y ago

This brought back some memories. In July 2004, I made a Firefox extension to "fix" a bad redesign of the website All Music Guide (my blog post: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/all-music-guide/ http://www.holovaty.com/writing/all-music-guide/). To my knowledge this was the first instance of a site-specific browser extension. Aaron Boodman saw that idea and took it much farther by developing Greasemonkey, which made the idea more general and more powerful.

tschiller 5y ago
That's a very cool bit of history! Adding it to my list of references/updates to make to the blog post

zerkten 5y ago

No mention of Binary Behaviors (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2001/january/cutting-edge-binary-behaviors-in-internet-explorer-5-5 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/msdn-magazine/2001/...), but I guess these could go in the ActiveX bucket. They are a bit more interesting than plug-ins when you consider where some of the current innovation is happening with front end web development and standards.

buescher 5y ago

I was hoping there'd be more of the oddball dead-ends like the python Grail browser or the tcl plugin for Netscape.

bigbillheck 5y ago

Disappointed but not surprised that Chimera (the original one) wasn't mentioned: https://web.archive.org/web/20110725164212/http://www.chimera.org/one/overview.html https://web.archive.org/web/20110725164212/http://www.chimer...

tschiller 5y ago

Author of the blog post here! If you comment with corrections/milestones I missed, I'll try to incorporate them I'll also be attempting to update the augmented browsing/browser extension Wikipedia page in the coming weeks

gnicholas 5y ago

> One notable startup I’ve come across is Insight Browser, an iOS browser that allows users to build and share simple extensions. I've worked with the Insight [1] folks (YC W19, I think?) to port my Chrome extension [2] to their platform. They made it super easy, and I'd recommend others give them a try. Not every extension makes sense on iOS, but for those that do, this can be a slick way to finally reach iOS users. Hopefully Insight can popularize mobile extensions and generate some competition in the mobile browser space! 1: https://www.insightbrowser.com https://www.insightbrowser.com 2: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifjafammaookpiajfbedmacfldaiamgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/beeline-reader/ifj...