Microsoft gave up on it’s own browser engine and embraced Chromium for the latest incarnation of Edge browser. Last year, the new version of Edge rolled out globally together with Windows Update. Overall, this is great for end-users, because Chromium brings better performance and standards support. It’s also great for Chrome extension developers, because suddenly there is a new browser that can be targeted with minimal code conversion effort. In 2021, Edge reached user adoption of 4.10% and already beat Firefox (3.66%). Continue reading...

Google has sent an email announcement to Google Web Store developers warning about new deadlines for Manifest V2 phase out. Starting from January 17, 2022, Chrome Web Store will stop accepting new extensions based on Manifest V2 with visibility set to "Public" or "Unlisted". Existing extensions will not be affected and you will still be able to publish updates. Moreover, this new restriction will start applying to new "Private" extensions as well starting from June of 2022. Continue reading...

Chrome Web Store provides some basic statistics on how your extensions are doing on the store. But data is usually delayed at least two days and does not show the most up to date picture of the situation. You might also want to correlate install rate with your marketing campaigns or calculate conversion rate after updating description text. There is a better way to track extension statistics using Google Analytics integration. Continue reading...

Sometimes getting a random extension ID assigned when installing an unpacked extension is not good enough. You might be testing authentication flow in your extension and would prefer that your local extension ID matches the ID assigned by Chrome Web Store. Continue reading...

You might want to use modern browser APIs in your extensions and completely ignore users that are running on outdated browser versions. It may seem that everyone gets the latest version of Chrome the same day since Chrome updates automatically. Reality is that users ignore Chrome updates and it’s even worse in organizations where browser updates may be blocked by IT policy. Continue reading...