Hi there. I'm new to this kind of discussion group and the like, so sorry if I make any faux pas..es. I ended up talking to some people in the Chromium IRC channel for a bit during this, and they suggested I write this up (that was last Thursday, sorry for taking so long to do so).
I have a decent level of understanding of HTML, and I know a bit of CSS and Javascript, and I'd love to learn more about them. I also love Chrome, and have been looking forward to "addons" for Chrome for a while. Thus, when I saw that the extension feature was out for developer channel builds of Chrome, and that the creation of extensions was based in HTML and the like, I decided to try my hand at some simple extensions. I read through the documents at http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions and basically just replicated the extension code there, as well as the code for the example extensions and played around with them. I was using Microsoft Wordpad to edit the HTML, and I was using --enable- extensions --load-extension="c:\myextension" to get an extension going. But when I tried to do it with two extensions, I ran into some problems. I tried editing manifest.json to include something like: "toolstrips": [ "my_toolstrip.html" "my_other_toolstrip.html" ], Which worked decently except that mousing over the extension inside Chrome would cause both to have the same description name. I'm not sure how else to say it, so here's just a pared down IRC log that should hopefully explain how things went: 16:13 Sidley I'm just fiddling around with extensions using the HOWTO in the documentation, and i'm trying to figure out if there's some way to put two different extensions in the same folder while i mess aroudn with both of them? 16:14 Sidley I tried to combine the manifest.json, and that works mostly fine 16:14 Sidley by making it refer to two different toolstrips (each for different extensions i'm trying to make) 16:15 Sidley but the name value i added while folowing the HOWTO for one is now going for both toolstrips 16:15 Sidley meaning i mouse over toolstrip 1 and 2, and both have the name for toolstrip 1 (the name value in manifest.json) 16:17 evmar Sidley: i think you need one folder per extension 16:17 evmar Sidley: the manifest.json defines setting for "the" extension in the current folder 16:17 Sidley how can i make chromium grab both folders then? 16:18 Sidley I tried adding a folder to where the sample extension folders go 16:18 Sidley the gmail checker and such 16:18 Sidley but it deletes that folder whenever i restart chrome 16:18 asargent Sidley: I don't think the code was designed to support loading via the command line flag for multiple extensions at once 16:19 Sidley asargent: that makes sense. How can i get multiple extensions going then? 16:19 asargent if you aren't developing both at the same time, you could run the python script to package one of them into a .crx file, and then install it 16:20 Sidley Umm, i'm not well versed in python. Just html, css, and a bit of javascript. Which is why this extension system caught my attention (and why i'm fiddling with it). 16:20 Sidley any other options? or is that it. 16:21 asargent Sidley: we're working on a web-based system to do the packaging for you, so that you upload a zip file and it returns a .crx for you 16:21 Sidley That's good. 16:22 asargent Sidley: you don't really need to understand python at all though to run the script; basically you just point it at the directory containing your extension, and it creates the .crx file for you 16:22 asargent http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/extensions/packaging 16:22 Sidley Yeah, i'm looking at that 16:23 Sidley i'm just lost on the "chromium_extension.py --indir=path \to\extension --outfile=myextension.crx" part. I have the chromium_extension.py file (and a program that can run python scripts), but how do i get the "chromium_extension.py --indir=path\to \extension --outfile=myextension.crx" to go? (again, sorry for the stupid quesitons) 16:24 asargent Sidley: what platform are you on? windows, mac, linux? 16:24 Sidley Windows XP 16:24 asargent and you have python installed? 16:24 Sidley yes 16:25 asargent via the installers from python.org, or cygwin? 16:25 Sidley uhhh 16:25 Sidley python.org 16:26 Sidley I'm running "ActiveState ActivePython 2.6" "PythonWin" 16:26 asargent ok, are you familiar with running programs via command prompt? 16:26 Sidley somewhat 16:26 Sidley i can navigate command prompt, at least 16:27 asargent basically you need to put the python script somewhere (say C:\tmp), and then call it pointing at your extension... 16:28 Sidley ok 16:28 p2mrx typically you'd run C:\Python25\python.exe something.py -- args 16:28 Sidley ok, i'll try that 16:28 Sidley (makes sense) 16:38 Sidley hooray, got some lovely errors and no crx file 16:38 Sidley on the plus side it turns out PythonWin lets me run the file quite easily with the arguments without having to use Command Prompt 16:39 Sidley on the downside, both PythonWin and Command Prompt are putting out the same error 16:43 Sidley ....aaaaand it turns out it was a stupid coding mistake i made 16:43 Sidley hooray for me 16:44 evmar Sidley: it'd be super-helpful if you could write up your experience with this and post it to chromium-dev 16:44 Sidley and it worked! hooray! 16:44 evmar Sidley: even if it was your mistake, maybe we could improve the error messages 16:44 evmar Sidley: you're one of the first people to develop an extension, so your input is really helpful 16:44 Sidley no, the error message was very simple 16:44 Sidley It was the python code error messages with it that were confusing 16:44 evmar that is good feedback 16:44 Sidley it put out an error message from you guys on the first line, then a blob of python errors. 16:45 evmar (i don't work on extensions, though, which is why i suggest posting to the list) 16:45 Sidley I just got lost in the python errors before I realized the first line told me what was wrong 16:50 Sidley evmar: where would i post that? in the bug reports? 16:50 evmar Sidley: in a post to the chromium-dev group 16:50 Sidley oh, wait, you meant the discussion group at http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev right? 16:50 asargent Sidley: http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev 16:50 evmar yes 16:50 Sidley ah ok 16:51 Sidley might want to add that link to http://dev.chromium.org/developers/discussion-groups 16:52 asargent Sidley: you might also consider creating a bug at http://crbug.com for the case of wanting to load up multiple extensions on the command line; that shouldn't be too difficult for us to implement 16:52 Sidley Ok, Thanks alot, to all of you Anyways, hope this is of some sort of help to you girls and guys...keep up the great work! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Chromium Discussion mailing list: [email protected] View archives, change email options, or unsubscribe: http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-discuss -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
