[HN Gopher] I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrom...
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I built a platform for discovering and sharing Chrome extension
collections
Author : trungpv1601
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-12-23 08:15 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (webextension.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (webextension.net)
| franze wrote:
| I found it more trustworthy to code my own extensions via
| ChatGPT. These are the last 2 ones. I pretty much dont care if
| people use them, as the mostly fulfill my own usecases.
|
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/comparative-chatgpt...
|
| https://thisismy.franzai.com/
|
| The cost of (small) software is fast approaching 0, and it can be
| faster now to code your own solution, instead of looking for one
| that nearly mostly fulfills your usecases.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| > I found it more trustworthy to code my own extensions
|
| I used to have a ton of little single use extensions that I
| barely ever used but thought at the time of installation, "that
| could be useful one day". Then I started noticing I was liking
| really random shit on Facebook. That immediately ceased when I
| uninstalled all but Bitwarden, Leechblock and uBlock Origin. I
| will never install another random 3rd party extension again
| collinvandyck76 wrote:
| Which of your single use extensions was causing you to like
| things on Facebook?
| aragonite wrote:
| Not the GP, but just last week Google automatically removed
| a single use extension (https://readermode.io) from my
| browser after flagging it as malware (as I recall the
| extension updated itself a day before the removal). The
| extension has also been taken down from the Chrome web
| store (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/reader-
| mode/llimhhc...) though Google hasn't provided any details
| about what it was doing that led to the removal.
| nomilk wrote:
| I think the asymmetry in payoffs explains this, since a
| bad actor who baits and switches their extension could do
| massive damage to users. So google try to catch this
| behaviour and inevitably have some false positives
| (extensions labelled malware that actually aren't). The
| cost of a false positive is annoyance. The cost of real
| malware getting through could be your bank balance.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Automatic extension updates is a stupid practice. The
| attack surface for a legit extension is minimal, while
| being huge for a malware update. I'm against almost all
| automatic software updates in general, but browser
| extensions take the cake for having an obscene
| cost/benefit ratio. Chrome won't even let you turn it
| off. Personally I extract and load all my extensions in
| developer mode.
| amelius wrote:
| I heard (on HN) that often an extension changes owners
| just before turning bad. Curious if that was the case
| here.
| digitalengineer wrote:
| Correct! That's why I use "Under new management"
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/under-new-
| managemen...
| freehorse wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240927002632/https://chrome
| web...
|
| There are several complains in the reviews, though it all
| seems a bit bizarre in that the issue was with an opt-in
| so-called "eco-mode" that basically was throwing pop-ups
| with affiliate links.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Tons of them. Custom download page, to avoid seeing the old
| ugly Chrome'a download shelf at the bottom of the screen.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Tons of them. Custom download page, to avoid seeing the
| old ugly Chrome'a download shelf at the bottom of the
| screen.
|
| Just to make sure--you seem to be replying to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42493152, which
| currently says:
|
| > Which of your single use extensions was causing you to
| like things on Facebook?
|
| Are you saying tons of your single-use extensions caused
| this Facebook liking, and a custom download page was one
| of them? Or was this meant to be a response to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42492881?
|
| (Or maybe something's wrong with parent links today. For
| me, on the main page, they are now turning into anchored
| links that don't seem to go where intended, which wasn't
| happening yesterday.)
| polotics wrote:
| Haha exactly! Except I didnt bother to publish mine on
| chromewebstore, it's just on gitlab:
| https://gitlab.com/natural_aliens/geminiwrap_plugin ...it makes
| Gemini-Chat voice dictation a bit more useful.
|
| My other one, the remove-youtube-shorts, is almost an one-
| liner, so I didnt even publish it it's too trivial I think.
| Everyone just make your own!
| franze wrote:
| Yeah, creating the marketing screenshots and filling out the
| publishing form takes longer nowadays then coding the actual
| extension.
| polotics wrote:
| Also if anyone wants to uses an extension I would much
| rather they make the minuscule effort to create a local
| folder, put the files in there, and load the extension's
| folder with the chrome extension mgr. Maybe even they can
| peek at the source code... I really don't see why I'd have
| to push my name, address, email etc on some google
| storefront and submit myself to spam reviews at the big
| "google-internet" party in the cloud.
| oefrha wrote:
| I was updating my Chrome Web Store extensions to MV3 the
| other day. Had to fill a fair bit of new stuff. Then one
| dead simple extension I haven't touched in a decade got its
| update rejected due to "description provided is
| insufficient to understand the functionality of the item",
| even though anyone who bothered to seek it out absolutely
| would have no trouble understanding what it does (according
| to analytics on the dashboard, there are a grand total of
| ~20 active users and a couple hundred throughout its
| lifetime), never mind what those lay reviewers think. The
| review process is really dumb.
| dsauerbrun wrote:
| I'm gonna need the remove youtube shorts one
| DaSHacka wrote:
| You can do it natively inside ublock origin if you don't
| want to install an extra extension (often the case for a
| surprising number of simple extensions, actually).
|
| I used to block it myself with my own filter, but after
| YouTube changed things up and broke it I've just been using
| someone else's filterlist and it works the same.
|
| https://github.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts
| vunderba wrote:
| An extension doesn't make sense for a simple DOM
| manipulation - I'd recommend installing Tampermonkey then
| finding a script like the following:
|
| https://github.com/hallzy/remove-youtube-
| shorts/blob/master/...
| 77pt77 wrote:
| But did you "code" them with chatgpt also?
| amelius wrote:
| I'm too scared to download extensions, so I use bookmarklets
| (on Firefox).
|
| But I like your suggestion of using ChatGPT to write
| extensions.
| RustySpottedCat wrote:
| Tampermonkey scripts with chatgpt is even faster. Adding a
| functionality to a website just by pasting the site's html in
| chatgpt and in 2min I get what I need.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Making a simple tool for a site or two is the perfect use
| case for a userscript manager like
| TamperMonkey/ViolentMonkey (FOSS alternative), I think
| making your own extension is somewhat overkill
|
| Easier to share with others, too
| croes wrote:
| Your cost but not the cost.
| RadiozRadioz wrote:
| Any plans to support FireFox extensions?
| trungpv1601 wrote:
| Yes. I'm working on it
| dizhn wrote:
| Not a good day to have Honey in the list :)
| nomilk wrote:
| Was curious so just searched. Apparently Honey would try to get
| the best coupon codes on the web, but they started partnering
| with businesses to give (say) 10% off via a Honey-specific
| discount code (e.g. HONEY10), but Honey would ignore other
| (possibly greater) discounts, thus lulling users into a false
| sense of security that they were getting the best deal when
| they often weren't.
| shreddit wrote:
| It's even worse. They steal from other promoters. Say you
| watch a LTT video and use one of their affiliate links. If
| you have honey installed they will replace the link with
| their own affiliate link and cash the promotion bonus without
| any promotion by themselves.
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| Of the three bad things they've been accused of, I'd
| consider that by far the least. Selling tracking data is an
| invasion of privacy. Deliberately not showing better
| discounts violates their core value proposition. Replacing
| deferral links doesn't hurt the user, and isn't much
| different from blocking ads.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| As a user that might use referral links to support the
| youtube channel, I do feel in an indirect way this does
| hurt the user
| microbass wrote:
| And, they highjacked referral links, ensuring they got
| referral commission, not the original referrer.
| handsclean wrote:
| Before the rest of these abuses, Honey was blatantly tracking
| users and selling that data, which I think is a good example
| of how privacy abuse is often a canary of generally immoral
| behavior.
| firtoz wrote:
| Sigh, and I was just thinking about installing it. Time to
| find another one, or perhaps it will also fall to Goodhart's
| Law.
| shreddit wrote:
| I'd really like to know what exactly you are looking for?
| There is no such thing as "free" and no browser extension
| will give you something for free. You are paying, one way
| or the other...
| firtoz wrote:
| I want to see and/or collect discount codes for things
| JadeNB wrote:
| > I'd really like to know what exactly you are looking
| for? There is no such thing as "free" and no browser
| extension will give you something for free. You are
| paying, one way or the other...
|
| Sometimes there are really-free things. Old-style open-
| source software is a collection of such things.
| Extensions, at their beginning, were too, and some of
| them still are. As far as I know, for example, there's no
| 'gotcha' in uBlock Origin (although there is the 'gotcha'
| of knowing to look for them instead of the myriad other
| solutions that are non-free).
| andelink wrote:
| My thoughts as well. Given their business model, any
| Honey replacement will be engaging in the same sort of
| behavior. Never seemed worth it to me.
| d3vr wrote:
| For anyone else outside the loop, MegaLag released a video [1]
| yesterday exposing the shady practices by Honey
|
| 1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk
| shreddit wrote:
| I'm actually impressed by honey. They could have either just
| sold the user data, or only switched the referral links, or
| just showed their users the "best" coupons.
|
| But they went for all of it. I'd have wanted to be in the room
| when the higher ups chose this path.
| anonymous344 wrote:
| I used to use extensions in the chrome, but then I noticed that
| my dev server private urls were being botted. Only way for them
| to get leaked was virus, google or some extension. For me it
| seemed like the Window Resizer -addon was leaking every url I
| visited. And it's not the only addon that seem to use google
| analytics. wtf?
| ned99 wrote:
| I like the UI. Neat.
| trungpv1601 wrote:
| Shout-out to FluxUI.dev
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| The less of Chrome extensions, the better.
| hieunc229 wrote:
| Interesting extension
| trungpv1601 wrote:
| Thanks Hieu
| deanc wrote:
| What UX library did you use here? It looks like bootstrap but
| isn't (as far as I can tell).
| vallode wrote:
| Looks like the website is built with Laravel[1] using
| Livewire[2] (Alpine JS on the front-end) and the UI library
| used is Flux[3].
|
| [1]: https://laravel.com/
|
| [2]: https://livewire.laravel.com/
|
| [3]: https://fluxui.dev/
| trungpv1601 wrote:
| Shout-out to FluxUI.dev
| vermayash8 wrote:
| Interesting, I find it useful. A couple of features you could
| think about:
|
| 1. Is there a feature to create a "pull request" to the
| collection maintainer to propose adding some extensions to their
| collection? Otherwise, there would be several public shared
| collections for the same use-case and it may become scattered.
|
| 2. I'd like to be able to favorite / like / star a collection,
| and that to be used as a signal to search results ranking.
|
| Another adjacent domain to expand could be Tampermonkey scripts.
| trungpv1601 wrote:
| Thank you for the feedback. I will add it to the roadmap.
| demaga wrote:
| Neat site. Nice to see my extension that I just published a
| couple of days ago here! It doesn't even have any users yet.
|
| How did you obtain this info? Is there an API for that?
|
| https://webextension.net/chrome/extension/epjjmfojjmbgignfnk...
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Please promote Firefox extensions. Chrome and Google are on a
| dangerous trajectoryin ruining peoples lives.
|
| Please dont be part of the problem in promoting chrome / chromium
| trungpv1601 wrote:
| Yeah. I'm working on it
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Please promote Firefox extensions. Chrome and Google are on a
| dangerous trajectoryin ruining peoples lives.
|
| Unfortunately, Firefox is on a trajectory of "imitate what
| Chrome's doing." I certainly no longer trust Mozilla as I once
| did. They're probably better than Google, but they've made it
| clear they're going to make decisions for market share over
| respecting their historical ideals.
| seanwilson wrote:
| For what it's worth, if you create a new profile for Chrome
| extensions, they won't have access to your regular browser
| profile.
|
| I do this for web developer extensions that typically need a lot
| of powerful permissions. So I have a Chrome profile that's full
| of web developer extensions, so they're isolated from private and
| security sensitive stuff like email and banking.
|
| Similarly, you can do this by installing Chrome Beta or Chrome
| Canary for use with different extensions you don't want to take a
| risk with.
| bl4kers wrote:
| Userscripts > extensions
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