Building Browser Extensions - by Matt Frisbie (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Almost all web developers today have plenty of experience with building regular web page apps, but a lot of that knowledge doesn't transfer over when it comes to creating browser extensions. This book provides a complete reference for how to build modern browser extensions.

Creating and deploying a browser extension is more like building a mobile app than a website. When you start building an extension you'll often find there are a large number of new concepts and idiosyncrasies to wrangle with. This book reveals how to successfully navigate around these obstacles and how to take advantage of the limited resources available.

You'll see how a browser extensions work, their component pieces, and how to build and deploy them. Additionally, you'll review all the tricky bits of extension development that most developers have to learn through trial and error. The current transition from manifest v2 to v3 is of special interest, and an entire chapter will be dedicated to this subject. By the end of this book, you will have a rich understanding of what browser extensions are, how they work, all the pitfalls to avoid, and the most efficient ways of building them.

What You'll Learn

• Examine the different components of browser extensions and how they behave
• Review common pitfalls developers encounter when building browser extensions and how to avoid them
  
• Develop, deploy, and manage a published browser extension
• Build a browser extension using modern JavaScript frameworks

Who This Book Is For

Developers tasked with building a supplementary browser extension to go alongside their existing product. This book also targets people that have at least a basic understanding of the fundamentals of web development and wish to quickly understand how they can roll out a browser extension.

From the Back Cover

Web developers today have plenty of experience with building regular web page apps, but a lot of that knowledge doesn't transfer over when it comes to creating browser extensions. This book provides a complete reference for how to build modern browser extensions.

Creating and deploying a browser extension is more like building a mobile app than a website. When you start building an extension, you'll often find there are a large number of new concepts and idiosyncrasies to wrangle with. This book reveals how to successfully navigate around these obstacles and how to take advantage of the limited resources available.

You'll see how a browser extensions work, their component pieces, and how to build and deploy them. Additionally, you'll review all the tricky bits of extension development that most developers have to learn through trial and error. The current transition from manifest v2 to v3 is of special interest, and an entire chapter is dedicated to this subject.

By the end of this book, you will have a rich understanding of what browser extensions are, how they work, all the pitfalls to avoid, and the most efficient ways of building them.

You will:

Examine the different components of browser extensions and how they behave

How to use all the latest extension APIs and features

Review common pitfalls developers encounter when building browser extensions and how to avoid them

Develop, deploy, and manage a published browser extension

Build a browser extension using modern JavaScript frameworksScript frameworks

About the Author

Matt Frisbie has worked in web development for over a decade. During that time, he's been a startup co-founder, an engineer at a Big Four tech company, and the first engineer at a Y Combinator startup that would eventually become a billion-dollar company. As a Google software engineer, Matt worked on both the AdSense and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) platforms; his code contributions run on most of the planet's web browsing devices. Prior to this, Matt was the first engineer at DoorDash, where he helped lay the foundation for a company that has become the leader in online food delivery. Matt has written three books, "Professional JavaScript for Web Developers", "Angular 2 Cookbook", and "AngularJS Web Application Development Cookbook", and recorded two video series, "Introduction to Modern Client-Side Programming" and "Learning AngularJS". He speaks at frontend meetups and webcasts, and is a level 1 sommelier. He majored in Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Matt's Twitter handle is @mattfriz.