Webextension-polyfill Alternatives

webextension-polyfill reviews and mentions

• I Switched to Firefox and Never Looked Back
  6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Jan 2025

  I've been on Firefox Dev Edition for Mac for the last 4 years I think, and I can't remember more than 1 or 2 websites that didn't work correctly on it. It's been flawless, more battery and memory efficient than Chrome, less finicky and problematic than Safari, and with all the extensions that I need.

  I seriously don't see any disadvantage in picking Firefox over Chrome. I still have Chrome around if any website requires it specifically, but I haven't launched it in ages.

  There were a few Chrome extensions that weren't there on Firefox [1] [2] but I fixed that _easily_ by getting the crx file, unpacking it, then adding the https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill to the extension to make it cross-browser.

  It's easy enough to make an extension work on both Firefox and Chrome, I've done it myself with SideHN (https://lowtechguys.com/sidehn), but I guess Firefox is not really in the mind of Chrome extension devs.

  [1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/anchor-headings/lgg...

  [2] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/xpath-helper/hgimno...

• Plasmo – a framework for building modern Chrome extensions
  11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 20 Aug 2024

  > The docs supplied by Google are quite good!

  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...

• Button Stealer
  2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Jul 2024

  Technically correct, but it is a bit more complex. The original web extension API is based on the chrome extension API. So most (there are some annoying exceptions at times) of the chrome extension API calls also work with very little adjustment on firefox. It becomes even easier when you use mozilla's polyfill library https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill

  Then you can just target the promise based webextension syntax and as long as you still stick to the calls also available in chrome your extension works with very little effort in both browsers.

  Safari is a different story which basically amounts to Apple being Apple and sort of supporting webextensions but in such a roundabout way that it is barely worth it for the majority of extension devs.

• Show HN: Chrome Reaper
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Dec 2023

  Porting this extension to Firefox should be relatively straightforward using the webextension polyfill: https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill

• Show HN: OpenAPI DevTools – Chrome ext. that generates an API spec as you browse
  17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Oct 2023

  Firefox maintain a library for unified extension API https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill

  Their type definition for HAR request isn't exported https://github.com/DefinitelyTyped/DefinitelyTyped/blob/mast...

• can you convert a simple firefox addon to be used with chrome?
  1 project | /r/chrome_extensions | 31 Oct 2022

  best is to use https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill

• Browser Extension with Blazor WASM - Cross-Browser Compatibility
  2 projects | dev.to | 5 Sep 2022

  The Browser Extension Working Group at W3.org proposes the web standards based on the Chrome extension manifest, which supports all web browsers. Based on that proposal, Mozilla has released the Browser Extension Polyfill library that supports the modern promise pattern instead of callback. Therefore, if you import this polyfill library, theoretically, your Chrome extension quickly turns into the browser extension that runs on multiple browser engines.

• IWTL how to make simple chrome extensions.
  1 project | /r/IWantToLearn | 2 Aug 2022

  And the biggest tip that i received late. Use Typescript type by Mozilla to make your development much easier(autocomplete, inline docs etc): https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill

• Show HN: Plasmo – a framework for building modern Chrome extensions
  8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Jun 2022
• It’s Like GPT-3 but for Code–Fun, Fast, and Full of Flaws
  5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 19 Mar 2022

  I've written extensions before and Firefox has a very good polyfill [0] that makes it quite easy to write extensions for all browsers. It does get a bit trickier if you also want to incorporate TypeScript [1] or React however.

  [0] https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill

  [1] https://github.com/Lusito/webextension-polyfill-ts

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