https://docs.plasmo.com/framework/workflows/faq#what-are-the...
what is the difference?
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.
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...
[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...
They are okayish in my book.
Personally, I prefer using the MDN docs [0][1] for web extensions as I am using mozilla's polyfill library [2] anyway. These contain more practical examples and less abstract descriptions at times, including a very thorough getting started guide [3] going over everything including various concepts.
The point remains the same though, the basics aren't all that difficult and while Plasmo does seem to make some aspects easier it also seems like overkill in other areas in regard to abstraction.
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
[2] https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill
[3] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...
It’s really a great little framework
I am also highly doubtful of it working perfectly given my experiences with Safari's implementation of the webextensions API. Though that of course depends on what API calls you actually need.
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!
And if you forgo modern frameworks entirely, you can just have everything in one directory and run everything more or less directly from there [2].
As far as I am concerned, the structure and packaging of web extensions isn't what makes them complicated, although it does seem to be what a lot of people get hung up on. The web extension APIs and their interaction is often a bigger challenge. Publishing is also somewhat of a pain to deal with, although that is more the process around it and the lack of communication from both Mozilla and Google about it at times.
[0] https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/blo...
[1] https://github.com/toolbox-team/reddit-moderator-toolbox/blo...
for anyone who is interested for an alternative to Plasmo, i chanced upon https://github.com/extension-js/extension.js
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.
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...
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
