i personally don't recommend it until they have a well written document as a lot of thing are not clear seems over encapsulated, you have to figure out yourself..
you have a better option you can try WXT (https://wxt.dev/)) also i don't find current scaled project that are using it. soo yh... try break build fix that's what we do
I built an extension for internal company use, using WXT. Fantastic dev experience, great docs, comprehensive examples. Exactly what a framework should do.
I will also recommend parcel (https://parceljs.org/recipes/web-extension/)
We have been using it for the last 3 months, and the only time we did anything for config was in the first day
Building a web extension is pretty straightforward in Vite-land. There are some rough edges around hot reloading, but I doubt it could get that much better.
The project might do a better job of explaining what it actually intends to solve. At least as far as the readme.md goes.
I have been active in the area of browser extension development for over a decade now. And to me, it wasn't very clear at first glance.
It isn't crossbrowser extension development (which these days is actually fairly easy if you ignore Safari.... [0]).
The README showcases adding a lot of other frameworks and scaffolding, which to me isn't what makes extension development all that challenging. In fact, using a modern modular approach can be achieved using something like rollup [1].
Of course, I do believe that Plasmo makes setting it all up a lot easier. But just looking at the terminal animation I also can't help but feel that it adds a lot of abstraction I might regret later. To be clear, I also do realize that some people don't mind this and think it is easier to not have to think about the details.
Only when digging a bit deeper into the actually documentation [2] it starts to make more sense to me. From what I gather:
- Manifest creation is done entirely by plasma. You can just declare the thing you want to use or create in the right place like an options page [3]. Which is actually quite neat and something I can see makes things a bit easier for someone freshly starting with extensions. Although I'd argue that the manifest of an extension is not the most complex thing [4], even more when I see that for that with Plasmo you still need to declare similar things just at a different spot [5]
- It provides some scaffolding and abstractions around things like storage and messing between content_scripts and background workers.
- There are some neat utilities available for publishing extensions.
Overall, it looks like it like it does take away the creation of an extension and a lot of the utility functions you would need to write anyway. However it comes at the cost, in my opinion, of extreme abstraction to the degree that a beginner basically will have learned Plasmo and still have next to no understanding of browser extensions themselves.
It's one of those things where I wish this sort of tooling was available around a decade ago but I am also glad that it was not given the knowledge it gained me.
Thank you for this thorough analysis. I've built an extension myself with React and TypeScript an honestly I don't know why I would need an extra tooling to make this work. The docs supplied by Google are quite good!
Tangentially related, I've always wondered why there aren't better frameworks for creating userscripts.
I like customizing websites for various things, but it would be nice if I had some library I can pull into a userscript purpose-built for customizing websites (like adding pop-up config dialogs, in-line boxes to take personal notes / comment on websites, or just tools geared toward injecting and scanning the DOM using mutationobservers).
... or is this that, since userscripts are implemented via browser extensions anyway
The more I write browser extensions though it seems that there’s not as much benefit to it beyond compiling and bundling everything for you (and the build process does seem to get rather slow rather quickly for me).
The author is pretty open to pull requests and feedback when they have time though!
how do you build a single browser extension and then have compatible firefox/chrome files that are different in what they require for their own thing.
i mean currently we are doing terribly stupid thing. two folders /firefox and /chrome and do the updates manually in both. there should be something easier.
The only really difference sometimes is in the manifest. If you target the webextension api and use the Mozilla poly fill library, your code base does not need to be duplicated at all.
It adds the benefit of being able to use all API calls in a promise based manner instead of needing to use callbacks.
Edit:
To give it a bit more context (although you can find that in other comments I left under this post).
Which if included allows you to swap out `chrome` callback based calls for promise based `browser` calls.
So instead of using `chrome.extension.api.call(() => { // callback})` you do something like `await browser.extension.api.call()` with the same results working in both browsers.
Then the only thing where you still need some separation is for the manifest as some keys are Firefox specific and vice versa.
Interesting, that on website there is no mention of building "Chrome extension" only extensions. They should even work on Edge. Was this the result of some unfortunate editorializing of post title?
[+] [-] rahulraikwar00|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] vzaliva|1 year ago|reply
https://docs.plasmo.com/framework/workflows/faq#what-are-the...
[+] [-] FBISurveillance|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jazzido|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] yas_hmaheshwari|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] deisteve|1 year ago|reply
what is the difference?
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aabhay|1 year ago|reply
https://github.com/antfu-collective/vitesse-webext
Building a web extension is pretty straightforward in Vite-land. There are some rough edges around hot reloading, but I doubt it could get that much better.
[+] [-] devvvvvvv|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] thenegation|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] creesch|1 year ago|reply
I have been active in the area of browser extension development for over a decade now. And to me, it wasn't very clear at first glance.
It isn't crossbrowser extension development (which these days is actually fairly easy if you ignore Safari.... [0]).
The README showcases adding a lot of other frameworks and scaffolding, which to me isn't what makes extension development all that challenging. In fact, using a modern modular approach can be achieved using something like rollup [1].
Of course, I do believe that Plasmo makes setting it all up a lot easier. But just looking at the terminal animation I also can't help but feel that it adds a lot of abstraction I might regret later. To be clear, I also do realize that some people don't mind this and think it is easier to not have to think about the details.
Only when digging a bit deeper into the actually documentation [2] it starts to make more sense to me. From what I gather:
- Manifest creation is done entirely by plasma. You can just declare the thing you want to use or create in the right place like an options page [3]. Which is actually quite neat and something I can see makes things a bit easier for someone freshly starting with extensions. Although I'd argue that the manifest of an extension is not the most complex thing [4], even more when I see that for that with Plasmo you still need to declare similar things just at a different spot [5]
- It provides some scaffolding and abstractions around things like storage and messing between content_scripts and background workers.
- There are some neat utilities available for publishing extensions.
Overall, it looks like it like it does take away the creation of an extension and a lot of the utility functions you would need to write anyway. However it comes at the cost, in my opinion, of extreme abstraction to the degree that a beginner basically will have learned Plasmo and still have next to no understanding of browser extensions themselves.
It's one of those things where I wish this sort of tooling was available around a decade ago but I am also glad that it was not given the knowledge it gained me.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41043974
[1] https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/blo...
[2] https://docs.plasmo.com
[3] https://docs.plasmo.com/framework/ext-pages#adding-the-optio...
[4] https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/blo...
[5] https://docs.plasmo.com/framework/content-scripts#adding-a-s...
[+] [-] aflorez|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] moi2388|1 year ago|reply
It’s really a great little framework
[+] [-] kelvie|1 year ago|reply
I like customizing websites for various things, but it would be nice if I had some library I can pull into a userscript purpose-built for customizing websites (like adding pop-up config dialogs, in-line boxes to take personal notes / comment on websites, or just tools geared toward injecting and scanning the DOM using mutationobservers).
... or is this that, since userscripts are implemented via browser extensions anyway
[+] [-] hnrodey|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] piperswe|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tbrockman|1 year ago|reply
The more I write browser extensions though it seems that there’s not as much benefit to it beyond compiling and bundling everything for you (and the build process does seem to get rather slow rather quickly for me).
The author is pretty open to pull requests and feedback when they have time though!
[+] [-] pvg|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Crier1002|1 year ago|reply
for anyone who is interested for an alternative to Plasmo, i chanced upon https://github.com/extension-js/extension.js
[+] [-] Jackobrien|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zipping1549|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] kwerk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 2Gkashmiri|1 year ago|reply
i mean currently we are doing terribly stupid thing. two folders /firefox and /chrome and do the updates manually in both. there should be something easier.
[+] [-] creesch|1 year ago|reply
It adds the benefit of being able to use all API calls in a promise based manner instead of needing to use callbacks.
Edit:
To give it a bit more context (although you can find that in other comments I left under this post).
The polyfill library itself: https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill
Which if included allows you to swap out `chrome` callback based calls for promise based `browser` calls.
So instead of using `chrome.extension.api.call(() => { // callback})` you do something like `await browser.extension.api.call()` with the same results working in both browsers.
Then the only thing where you still need some separation is for the manifest as some keys are Firefox specific and vice versa.
An example you can find here: https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox
Where all code lives in one directory and there is just two manifest files, one for chrome and firefox: https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/tre...
Building is nothing more than rollup packaging the code and grabbing the right manifest to put in the build directory for each browser: https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/blo...
[+] [-] moi2388|1 year ago|reply
From my personal experience; most stuff just works cross platform. Currently building an extension and it just works in edge, chrome, Firefox, safari.
You can use poly fill or custom code for when it’s really needed of course
[+] [-] mcintyre1994|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] electricduck|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] butz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]