Browser Add-on project

Our first open source project aimed at making a broswer extension. We started off in groups and learned about how to create a simple browser extension in Firefox. Then we made an a bit more complicated extension that allowed the user to select a beast from a popup. We analyzed the FOSS elements of the MDN WebExtension example repository. It was super helpful for us to see from this example what we needed to include in our browser extension repository.

We also examined some existing non-Firefox official browser extensions, such as Return Youtube Dislike. Return Youtube Dislike is a open source browser extension for both Chrome and Firefox. My biggest contribution was help finding the repository and the FOSS elements in this project. It was really interesting to see it include README and CONTRIBUTING files for tens of languages.

We discussed some ideas for the browser extension that we’ll be making, such as one that tracks the time stayed on a given tab, but we haven’t decided the exact idea we’ll be using. We have arranged a meeting next week to work on the project in person. I found the group work part of this project toarranged a meeting next week to work on the project and hopefully we’ll also contribute some be very exciting. In all of my previous CS classes, projects/labs all required individual work and had little to none collaboration.