Were you thinking about building multi-browser extensions? Great! It turns out that most modern browsers offer some support for the Chrome Extension API. Firefox has it almost built in, while Safari and Edge offer porting tools.
Today we learned that Firefox supports Chrome Extension API almost out of the box (extensions written for Chrome/Opera will in most cases run in Firefox with just a few changes), Safari requires more changes but there is an official port guide, and as for Internet Explorer Edge, there is an official tool to port it. Firefox and Internet Explorer Edge support content scripts and background scripts similarly to Chrome. Safari has a similar mechanism, too, but it's called End Script (for content script) and Global Page File (for background script).
Another thing is that Safari requires the use of the extension builder, which is a GUI app and requires a lot of clicking, but it can be automated thanks to this script.
Seems like there’s no better time to build a multi-browser extension than now :)
Today’s Developers’ Notes were served by Łukasz, our Web Application Development Team Leader. If you enjoy these little programming tips and tricks, keep an eye out for more from this ongoing series.
