My First Workshop: Introduction to Chrome Extension

Information sharing makes us wise, or at least so is the popular belief. In a sly manner, the series of conversations and interactions that frame the process leads to developing bonds helping understand your periphery better.

On 13th August 2017, I conducted my first workshop on “Building Chrome Extension” which was geared towards introducing the basic structure of Chrome Extensions. I had my co-workers attend the event. I was excited and equally nervous to be sharing my knowledge on the topic. You will find my presentation slides here.

I was already in the office — the venue for my workshop — by 9:30 am, an hour before the start of the event. Though there were ten initial signups, only six made it. The off day probably had a role in the high number of absentees. I was glad that I could start my session.

I started with a basic structure of chrome. I talked about the background page, context menu, content script and browser actions(popup). manifest.json file indeed proved to become a headache to me.

Since the documentation of manifest.json is long, I could not find the appropriate examples to get started. I spend a week on an in-depth analysis and study to understand the core values and functions of manifest.json. In that process, I put forth some examples that showed the correct uses of the manifest file in Chrome Extension. The examples included the proper use of manifest.json for different components, including background page, content script and browser actions, of Chrome Extension. These examples helped me later in the workshop when we were trying to work out the case of chrome extensions.

After necessary manifest.json description, we continued with basic examples of all components. It gave the attendees an overview of how all the component are structured and how we could use them in the context of their requirements to follow. I added few more examples using various apis Chrome has added in addition to browser web API functionalities. As a feedback, I got that I was moving a little faster, and they had a hard time catching up.

Feedback and workshop as a whole gave a whole new level of experience: dealing with people, working with them on a problem, providing information they need, managing a workshop. I had fun organizing the seminar, and hope all my colleagues had fun learning from me.

I was already in the office — the venue for my workshop — by 9:30 am, an hour before the start of the event. Though there were ten initial signups, only six made it. The off day probably had a role in the high number of absentees. I was glad that I could start my session. I started with a basic structure of chrome. I talked about the background page, context menu, content script and browser actions(popup). manifest.json file indeed proved to become a headache to me. Since the documentation of manifest.json is long, I could not find the appropriate examples to get started. I spend a week on an in-depth analysis and study to understand the core values and functions of manifest.json. In that process, I put forth some examples that showed the correct uses of the manifest file in Chrome Extension. The examples included the proper use of manifest.json for different components, including background page, content script and browser actions, of Chrome Extension. These examples helped me later in the workshop when we were trying to work out the case of chrome extensions. After necessary manifest.json description, we continued with basic examples of all components. It gave the attendees an overview of how all the component are structured and how we could use them in the context of their requirements to follow. I added few more examples using various apis Chrome has added in addition to browser web API functionalities. As a feedback, I got that I was moving a little faster, and they had a hard time catching up. Feedback and workshop as a whole gave a whole new level of experience: dealing with people, working with them on a problem, providing information they need, managing a workshop. I had fun organizing the seminar, and hope all my colleagues had fun learning from me.

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Ajay Gopal Shrestha

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Sr. Software Engineer, Fusemachines Inc. Full Stack Developer. Experienced in working with PHP, javaScript, Emberjs, ReactJs, NodeJs, ExpressJs, jQuery