[webkit-dev] browser extensions

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Apr 15, 2009, at 9:06 AM, Patrick Mueller wrote:

> Now that the Chrome folks have talked about extensions, I thought  
> I'd ask what the story/plan is for WebKit.
>
>  http://www.aaronboodman.com/2009/04/content-scripts-in-chromium.html
>
> So ... I guess the first question is, are extensions considered out- 
> of-scope for WebKit?  As in, more of a browser thing than a toolkit  
> thing?  It's easy to see this going either way; 'portable'  
> extensions will be hard, especially given any browser specific  
> things you might want extensions to do; on the other hand, having  
> all the WebKit consumers out there having a common extension story  
> would obviously be very useful.
>
> As an alternative to a full-on extension story, or maybe in addition  
> to, you could look at the way inspector is implemented as a form of  
> extension, perhaps just applicable for use by folks actively  
> developing products with WebKit, as opposed to consumers of those  
> products.  I haven't looked deep enough into inspector to see if  
> it's built on some extensibility story or not.
>
> I perused the wiki and web site in general, didn't notice any  
> discussion on this, but of course, just point me to it if it's  
> already there.

I think we would consider browser extensions to be a browser feature,  
not an engine feature, and therefore out of scope for WebKit. However,  
appropriate hooks for implementing extension mechanisms would be in  
scope.

Regards,
Maciej