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I wrote a Firefox extension that has (significantly) more than a million downloads. I turned over maintenance to another developer because the Firefox extensio
by zargon 17y ago
I wrote a Firefox extension that has (significantly) more than a million downloads. I turned over maintenance to another developer because the Firefox extension platform is so difficult to work with. If Google has really made extension development comparatively easier, it will be a great boon for Chrome.
I have only glanced over the docs, but I suspect that the Chrome extension APIs don't have comparably extensive access to internal browser code as Firefox extensions do. For most extensions this won't matter, but for certain uses Firefox will probably stay ahead in this area, at least for a while.
- jfarmer 17y agoThe first comment on this blog lays out some key differences: http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/google-chrome-extensions/ http://jonoscript.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/google-chrome-ext...
- qeorge 17y agoXUL is a double-edged sword. It allows deep integration between extensions and the browser, but you pay for it in performance. Chrome has positioned itself towards performance at the cost of extensibility. Thus I expect it will be difficult for them to allow true extensions in the way Firefox does without giving up some of their trademark speed.
- zargon 17y agoIn addition to XUL, Firefox exposes many internal APIs to javascript extensions via XPCOM. These hooks allow for powerful modifications to browser behavior. So this also shows a trade-off with Google simplifying extension development at the cost of lowering the degree of customization that is possible.