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I've developed extensions/plugins for both browsers. Chrome is way easier, but not as powerful. Firefox is much more obtuse, but also much more powerful. In pr

I've developed extensions/plugins for both browsers. Chrome is way easier, but not as powerful. Firefox is much more obtuse, but also much more powerful. In practice, I found developing for Chrome much more enjoyable. Developing for Chrome felt like modern development whereas developing for Firefox felt very heavy, verbose and overall frustrating.

randomchars 14y ago
What are some things that you can do in Firefox but not in Chrome?
- icebraining 14y ago
  Chrome extensions have a fairly limited API that lets you do some pre-approved things using an HTML/CSS UI. Firefox, on the other hand, provides full access to its internal modules; a lot of the browser itself is built on JavaScript and XUL (the UI language) and extensions are essentially on equal footing in that regard: they can extend and even replace a lot of the browser. A good example is sqlite-manager, which is essentially a simple but full-blown database manager which can read and edit SQLite databases, since it has filesystem access. There's also the oldish Chatzilla, which can connect directly to IRC servers (a Chrome extension can only connect to HTTP or websocket servers). And It's All Text! which can launch a local text editor to edit a textarea field.
icebraining 14y ago
When you developed for Firefox, have you tried the new Addons SDK[1]? My understanding is that its model resembles Chrome's. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/latest/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/latest/
- patd 14y ago
  I'm currently porting my Firefox extension to the new Addon SDK. It does indeed look more like the Chrome/Safari/Opera model and makes things easier (like restartless addons which was hard to do before in Firefox).