Overcoming Web App Limitation with Chrome Extensions

A talk given to the London Hacker News July 2011 meetup covering ways in which web apps can overcome traditional limitations on their interactions with users, by utilising Chrome Extensions.

Transcript

1. WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT BROWSER EXTENSIONS? Thursday, 19 April 12
2. MAKE EXTENSIONS AND OVERCOME WEB APP LIMITATIONS Thursday, 19 April 12
3. CAN’T TALK TO USERS WHEN OUR SITE ISN’T OPEN Thursday, 19 April 12
4. NOTIFY USERS ANYTIME Thursday, 19 April 12
5. NOTIFY USERS ANYTIME • Change icon in browser toolbar: • Update ‘badge text’ (eg, unread count) and color • Desktop notifications • Don’t use these, they’re fucking annoying Thursday, 19 April 12
6. USERS MUST STOP WHAT THEY’RE DOING & VISIT YOUR SITE Thursday, 19 April 12
7. • You can make a full app run in a ‘popup’. • Users don’t have to leave their site POPUP APPS Thursday, 19 April 12
8. TYPICAL POPUP APP Asks BG page to auth Asks BG page to fetch data Requests to update UI API Provider with REST/SOAP API PopUp UI API Requests JSON Responses or XML if they hate you Background App ‘Background Page’ Runs persistently Authenticates when asked Starts polling once authenticated Backs off when API breaks Thursday, 19 April 12
9. SITES THAT DON’T HAVE APIS Thursday, 19 April 12
10. NOT NAMING NAMES That would be unfair. Thursday, 19 April 12
11. Thursday, 19 April 12
12. Other People’s Content Page JS Origin DOM Content Script JS HTTP Requests HTTP Requests Any site in extension permissions Thursday, 19 April 12
13. STEALING SHIT Thursday, 19 April 12
14. OTHER PEOPLE’S HTML Thursday, 19 April 12
15. A WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHER SHIT THAT YOU CAN’T NORMALLY ACCESS • Custom ‘options’ pages • Changing ‘new tab’ page • Address bar ‘page actions’ • Bookmarks, Cookies, History Thursday, 19 April 12
16. WHAT’S AWFUL Thursday, 19 April 12
17. ALL DIFFERENT Thursday, 19 April 12
18. ONE IS VERY DIFFERENT. JS JS JS JS Yes, that one. You win a cookie. Thursday, 19 April 12
19. THANKS @MIKEMACCANA MIKEMACCANA ON HN Thursday, 19 April 12
20. DOING SOAP IN THE BROWSER • All JS ‘autogenerate library from magic WSDL ponies’ libraries tested were broken • You need to munge the XML manually • JQuery does not do XPath anymore • Namespaces are awesome super fun Thursday, 19 April 12