About Chrome Extensions

A Chrome extension is essentially just a group of files that customizes your experience in the Google Chrome browser. There are a few different kinds of Chrome extensions; some activate when a certain condition is met, like when you’re on a store checkout page; some only pop up when you click on an icon; and some appear each time you open a new tab. Both of the extensions that I published this year are ‘new tab’ extensions; the first is Compliment Dash, a dashboard that keeps a to-do list and compliments the user, and the second is a tool for pastors called Liturgical.li. If you know how to code a basic website, then you can code this kind of extension without too much difficulty.

Prerequisites

We’re going to keep things simple, so in this tutorial, we’ll just be using HTML, CSS, and some basic JavaScript, as well as customizing a manifest.json file that I’ll include below. Chrome extensions vary in complexity, so building a Chrome extension can be as simple or complicated as you want it to be. After you learn the basics here, you’ll be able to create something much more complicated using your own skillset.

Setting Up Your Files

For this tutorial, we’re going to create a simple dashboard that greets the user by name. Let’s call our extension Simple Greeting Dashboard.

To get started, you’ll want to create three files: index.html , main.css , and main.js . Put these in their own folder. Next, fill the HTML file with basic HTML document setup, and connect it to the CSS and JS files:

<!-- ================================= Simple Greeting Dashboard ================================= //--> <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>Simple Greeting Dashboard</title> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen" href="main.css" /> </head> <body> <!-- My code will go here --> <script src="main.js"></script> </body> </html>

Customizing Your manifest.json file

These files won’t be enough to get your project working as a Chrome extension. For that, we need a manifest.json file that we’ll customize with some basic information about our extension. You can download that file on Google’s developer portal, or just copy/paste the following lines into a new file and save it as manifest.json in your folder:

{

"name": "Getting Started Example",

"version": "1.0",

"description": "Build an Extension!",

"manifest_version": 2

}

Now, let’s update the sample file with a little more information about our extension. We’ll want to change only the first three values of this code: name , version , and description . Let’s fill in our name and a one-line description, and since this is our first version, let’s keep that value at 1.0. The manifest_version number should be kept the same.

Next, we’re going to add a few lines to tell Chrome what to do with this extension.

{

"name": "Simple Greeting Dashboard",



"version": "1.0",



"description": "This Chrome extension greets the user each time they open a new tab",



"manifest_version": 2 "incognito": "split",



"chrome_url_overrides": {

"newtab": "index.html"

},



"permissions": [

"activeTab"

], "icons": {

"128": "icon.png"

}

}

The value "incognito": "split" tells Chrome what to do with this extension when it’s in incognito mode. "split" will allow the extension to run in its own process when the browser is incognito; for other options, see the Chrome developer documentation.

As you can probably see, "chrome_url_overrides" tells Chrome to open index.html whenever a new tab is opened. The value of "permissions" will give the user a pop-up letting them know that this extension will override their new tab when they try to install it.

Finally, we’re telling Chrome what to display as our favicon: a file called icon.png , which will be 128 x 128 pixels.

Creating an Icon

Since we don’t have the icon file yet, next, we’ll create an icon for Simple Greeting Dash. Feel free to use the one I made below. If you’d like to make your own, you can easily do so using Photoshop or a free service like Canva. Just be sure the dimensions are 128 x 128 pixels, and that you save it as icon.png in the same folder as your HTML, CSS, JS, and JSON files.

My 128x128 icon for Simple Greeting Dash

Uploading Your Files (If You’re Coding Your Own Page)

The information above is all you really need to know to create your own new tab Chrome extension. After you customize your manifest.json file, you can design whatever kind of new tab page you want in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and upload it as shown below. But if you’d like to see how I’m going to make this simple dashboard, skip down to “Creating a Settings Menu.”

Once you’re done styling your new tab page, your Chrome extension is done and ready to upload to Chrome. To upload it yourself, head to chrome://extensions/ in your browser and toggle on Developer Mode in the upper right.

Refresh the page and click on “Load unpacked.”

Next, select the folder where you’re storing your HTML, CSS, JS, and manifest.json files, as well as your icon.png , and upload. The extension should work each time you open a new tab!

Once you’re done with your extension and have tested it out yourself, you can get a developer account and it to the Chrome extension store. This guide on publishing your extension should help.

If you aren’t creating your own extension right now and just want to see what’s possible with Chrome extensions, read on to see how to make a very simple greeting dashboard.

Creating a Settings Menu

For my extension, the first thing I’ll want to do is create an input where my user can add their name. Since I don’t want this input to be visible all the time, I’m going to put it in a div called settings , which I’ll make visible only when the Settings button is clicked.

<button id="settings-button">Settings</button> <div class="settings" id="settings"> <form class="name-form" id="name-form" action="#"> <input class="name-input" type="text"

id="name-input" placeholder="Type your name here..."> <button type="submit" class="name-button">Add</button> </form> </div>

Right now, our settings look like this:

So beautiful!

… so I’m going to give them some basic styles in CSS. I’ll give the button and input both some padding and an outline, and then put a little space between the settings and the form.

.settings { display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-content: center; } input { padding: 5px; font-size: 12px; width: 150px; height: 20px; }

button { height: 30px; width: 70px; background: none; /* This removes the default background */ color: #313131; border: 1px solid #313131; border-radius: 50px; /* This gives our button rounded edges */ font-size: 12px; cursor: pointer; } form { padding-top: 20px; }

Now our settings look a bit better:

But let’s make them hidden when the user hasn’t clicked on Settings. I’ll do this by adding the following to .settings , which will cause the name input to disappear off the side of the screen:

transform: translateX(-100%); transition: transform 1s;

Now let’s create a class called settings-open that we’ll toggle on and off in JavaScript when the user clicks the Settings button. When settings-open is added to settings , it will not have any transformations applied to it; it’ll just be visible in its normal position.

.settings-open.settings { transform: none; }

Let’s get the class toggle working in JavaScript. I’m going to make a function called openSettings() that will toggle the class settings-open on or off. To do this, I’ll first get the element by its ID of "settings" , then use classList.toggle to add the class of settings-open .

function openSettings() { document.getElementById("settings").classList.toggle("settings-open"); }

Now I’ll add an event listener that will trigger the function whenever the Settings button is clicked.

document.getElementById("settings-button").addEventListener('click', openSettings)

This will make your settings appear or disappear whenever you click the Settings button.

Creating a Personalized Greeting

Next, let’s create the greeting message. We’ll make an empty h2 in HTML, and then fill it using innerHTML in JavaScript. I’m going to give the h2 an ID so I can access it later, and put it inside a div called greeting-container to center it.

<div class="greeting-container"> <h2 class="greeting" id="greeting"></h2> </div>

Now, in JavaScript, I’m going to create a basic greeting using the user’s name. First I’ll make variable to hold the name, which I’ll keep empty for now, and add to later.

var userName;

Even if userName wasn’t empty, if I just put userName into a greeting in my HTML, Chrome wouldn’t use the same name if I open it in another session. To make sure Chrome remembers who I am, I’m going to have to work with local storage. So I’ll make a function called saveName() .

function saveName() { localStorage.setItem('receivedName', userName); }

The function localStorage.setItem() takes two arguments: the first is a keyword I’ll use to access the information later, and the second is the information it needs to remember; in this case, the userName . I’m going to get this saved information through localStorage.getItem , which I’m going to use to update the userName variable.

var userName = localStorage.getItem('receivedName');

Before we link this to an event listener in the form, I want to tell Chrome what to call me if I haven’t told it my name yet. I’ll do this using an if statement.

if (userName == null) { userName = "friend"; }

And now, let’s finally hook up our userName variable to our form. I want to do this inside of a function, so that I can call that function whenever the name is updated. Let’s call the function changeName() .

function changeName() { userName = document.getElementById("name-input").value; saveName(); }

I want to call this function each time someone submits a name using the form. I’ll do this with an event listener, in which I’ll call the function changeName() and also prevent the page’s default of refreshing when a form is submitted.

document.getElementById("name-form").addEventListener('submit', function(e) { e.preventDefault() changeName(); });

Finally, let’s create our greeting. I’ll put this in a function as well, so that I can call it both when the page is refreshed, and whenever changeName() occurs. Here’s the function:

function getGreeting() { document.getElementById("greeting").innerHTML = `Hello, ${userName}. Enjoy your day!`; }

getGreeting()

Now I’ll call getGreeting() in my changeName() function and call it a day!

Finally, Style Your Page

Now it’s time to add the finishing touches. I’m going to center my header using flexbox, make it bigger, and add a gradient background to the body in CSS. And to make the button and h2 pop against the gradient, I’ll make them white.

.greeting-container { display: flex; justify-content: center; align-content: center; } .greeting { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 60px; color: #fff; } body { background-color: #c670ca; background-image: linear-gradient(45deg, #c670ca 0%, #25a5c8 52%, #20e275 90%); } html { height: 100%; }

And that’s it! Your page will look like this: