Working with Twitter: Chrome extension OR PWA?
Hi everyone I have a subject for you.
I'm developing a simple chrome extension that adds a little button near every tweet in a twitter page and allows you to retrieve and handle all the tweets you want.
While I was doing my researches on the project I was suggested to switch to a web app to reach a broader audience on multiple browsers and devices.
The perspective is quite tempting but the point is: can a PWA do what I am aiming for?
I am fairly new to all the browser extensions/web app world and I couldn't find an answer yet.
From the resources about PWA I found it seems to me that their main scope is the creation of complete and autonomous multiplatform applications rather than simple augmentations to existing browsers or sites, but I could be wrong.
In my case, the browser would be the main focus. I want to provide a service during navigation and not in an external environment.
Should I come back with my chrome extension idea or try with the PWA?
PWAs are a very different idea to extensions and I don't think they really fit your use case. The easiest way to think about Progressive Web Apps is that they are like normal apps but don't have to be downloaded directly from the app store / play store, that can be downloaded from a website.
This is a very simplified view and they do have a lot of advantages that I won't go into here but hopefully you get the idea. In other words a PWA probably does not fix as they won't allow you to add a button to a tweet on a web page in a browser. This is generally something only an extension can do.
Next as a side point:
Check out webextension-toolbox as it can help you build extensions for multiple browsers easily. I've been using it for Bid Hero and it adds zero overhead but gives you support for different browsers . It won't help with the multiple devices mind you (mobiles).
For example:
chrome tabs query lets you can info about a users open tabs. The call looks something like:
Instead the Browser Extensions JavaScript API. This means to make the same request work in all browsers with webextension-toolbox you just use
browserinstead ofchromeHope that helps
Thank you very much, you have solved my doubts and provided an excellent alternative to improve my project!
I couldn't ask for a better reply!
PWA seems to be what I thought and despite seems to be a very interesting technology they don't help me in this case.
Thank you again!
No worries at all. Happy to help.
Good luck!
TIL about this toolbox. Nifty!