I interest in developer dashboard of chrome web store
when I try to upload text file name manifest.json but inner file doesn't json format
I know that google uses any means to check the file structure
thank for suggest
Before uploading your extension to the webstore, it is really better to test by loading your extension as an "unpacked extension", which you can do by visiting chrome://extensions, expanding "Developer Mode" if it isn't already expanded, and then clicking "Load unpacked extension..."
Loading your extension will allow you to test it and discover issues, long before publishing it to test accounts or to other users. The Chrome extension developers' guide - manifest format documents what is permissible in the manifest. It is also necessary for the manifest to be standard JSON.
Also, I should point out that the Chrome webstore may disallow well-formatted code if it violates the terms (e.g. violating the branding guidelines or seeming to represent a website you don't own).
I found that Chrome store will not accept manifest.json including "// comment", but Chrome developer mode accepts.
I copy and paste from here, and "// Optional" is added to my manifest.json file.
http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/manifest.html
Maybe Chrome developer mode should also reject the comments?
Related
I have developed a google extension and i want to share it with people without uploading it on chrome web store and without letting people to know about the content code of the extension.
What shall i do ???
You can't. The only way you can let people have your Chrome Extension without uploading it to Web Store, is by sending them a .zip file, that they unpack and load in chrome://extensions.
I don't see why you won't want people to know about the content of the extension, and why you won't just upload it to the Web Store.
There is no possible way, except the way Toke Raabjerg mentioned. (Involving developer mode)
Besides this, there is an option to upload the Extension and not list it on the store. With this option only people with the direct link can download your Extension.
I need to develop some sort of browser plugin/extension to track search string on some search engine web site, ex: google.com, bing.com.
From the research, for chrome extension, I saw somebody suggest content js is the way to go. Is it true? Is there a cross-browser approach?
You can use Content.JS or any other JS library you like for developing an extension but with only JS library you cannot develop an extension.
There is a specific way for each browser. It contains at least 4 files.
(1) Manifest file (2) HTML file (3) JS file (4) CSS file
You also need to refer browsers object model.
You can refer links below may help you to get more information.
(1) Creating a Microsoft Edge extension
(2) Getting Started Tutorial to create an extension for Chrome
(3) Your first extension for FireFox
To support cross browser functionality, You can try to port your chrome extension to Firefox or MS Edge. To get more information on porting an extension, you can refer links below.
(1) Porting an extension from Chrome to Microsoft Edge
(2) Porting a Google Chrome extension
Note:- You also need to refer policy of each browser to access browsing data of users. It can be possible that all browser has some difference in their policies.
For internal use in my department I wrote a Chrome extension. It works fine in developer mode and I delivered it to my colleagues by e-mail attaching the .crx-file. They opened chrome://extensions and drag-and-drop it there. The message
drop to install extension
appeared, Chrome installed the extension and it works like a charm.
Nevertheless, on the very first restart of Chrome, a message appears that Chrome deactivates an unsupported extension.
A link to the help page Extensions disabled by Chrome is added to the message, and states:
To protect you while you browse, Chrome only lets you use extensions that have been published on the Chrome Web Store.
While I understand the reason, is there any other way a user can explicitly tell Chrome an extension is safe? Some effort is acceptable as publishing the extension to the webstore is not.
I have no administrative access, so no changes to registry nor active directory are possible.
As noted, you need Active Directory level policies to whitelist / auto-install extensions. See Policy List.
Chrome will use many defense mechanisms to detect and fight other trickery. The stance is simple: anything an unprivileged user can do any other software can do to implant malware.
However, you should consider publishing in CWS.
This can be done unlisted; unless someone has the listing link, the extension won't be discoverable.
This approach will present a risk of a leak of the link, but with your current delivery mechanism crx can leak as well; in general, copy-protecting extensions is basically infeasible.
This can be done with enforced control over accounts; you can publish to a Google Group of "trusted testers", who will be the only ones to see the listing.
Won't work if you're not allowed to sign into your Google accounts in Chrome.
This can be published with enforcing access only to your domain's users - if you use GApps for your work.
All of the above might not work if your extension is somehow questionable by CWS policies; if you can't publish for this exact reason, and can't use AD policies, I'm afraid you're SOL.
There isn't a way without domain level management to make this work. You can't just have the user "say" it is safe, since the user "saying" something could very well be the attacker. Any mechanism put in place to get around this would simply be used by attackers and unthoughtful companies to add more junk into your browser.
With recent news of adblock being sold to some unknown company, first thing i want to do is disable any possible update for that extension.
I've found number of questions but they are outdated. So chrome pros please tell how do we disable a specific plugin? and please take into consideration that there are many instances which synchronize it is important that the change gets synchronized to other computers, if it is not how do we do that?.
And a secondary question : where do we find sources of already installed extension? so that we could later pack and run it?
Chrome does not offer a way of disabling an update for a specific extension.
If you want to make sure that you run some specific version of an extension, you could try any of the following options:
Read-only extension folder
Go to the directory containing the extension, and mark the directory as read-only. To find that directory, visit chrome://version and look at the path at "Profile Path". The extension will then be at [value of Profile path]/Extensions/[32-character extension id].
Download the source code
Download the source code of the extension, and load it as an unpacked extension (or upload it to the Chrome Web store, and then install it).
There are several ways to get the source code (including just copying it from the directory as I mentioned at the previous step).
If you want to download a Chrome extension without installing it (e.g. because the new version contains unwanted "features" that you want to remove), then you could use my Chrome extension source viewer to download the code.
Some extensions expect to be run with a specific extension ID. You can forge this extension ID if you load the extension in unpacked mode (but you cannot upload the extension to the CWS if you do that). For instructions on fixing the extension ID, see How to change chrome packaged app id Or Why do we need key field in the manifest.json?.
How can I find out what the chrome extension id is for an extension?
Use the chrome.runtime.id property from the chrome.runtime API.
You get an extension ID when you upload your extension to Google Web Store. Ie. Adblock has URL https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb and the last part of this URL is its extension ID cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb.
If you wish to read installed extension IDs from your extension, check out the managment module. chrome.management.getAll allows to fetch information about all installed extensions.
If you just need to do it one-off, navigate to chrome://extensions. Enable Developer Mode at upper right. The ID will be shown in the box for each extension.
Or, if you're working on developing a userscript or extension, purposefully throw an error. Look in the javascript console, and the ID will be there, on the right side of the console, in the line describing the error.
Lastly, you can look in your chrome extensions directory; it stores extensions in directories named by the ID. This is the worst choice, as you'd have extension IDs, and have to read each manifest.json to figure out which ID was the right one. But if you just installed something, you can also just sort by creation date, and the newest extension directory will be the ID you want.
As Alex Gray points out in a comment above, "all of the corresponding IDs are actually on the extensions page within the browser".
However, you must click the Developer Mode checkbox at top of Extensions page to see them.
Extension IDs can be found in:
chrome://extensions (Chrome_Hotdog >> More_tools >> Extensions) Developer mode.
For Linux: $HOME/.config/google-chrome/Default/Preferences (json file) under ["extensions"].
All extension ID are listed here:
chrome://system