What service to create browser extensions to choose?
Most of us have heard about browser extensions, many actively use them in everyday life. They facilitate us access to popular services, promptly provide us with the necessary information.
I am familiar with browser extensions firsthand, I work in the IT business and many of the problems that I encounter in my work are successfully resolved using browser extensions.
Some time ago, I tried to find an online service that would allow you to quickly create browser extensions for various needs. During the searches, I came across three (free) services that aroused my interest, and I want to share them with you, dear hawkers.
Conduit has been developing this service, and has been dealing with browser extensions for over 10 years. They claim about 260 thousand publishers and 250 million end users.
Community Toolbar supports the following popular browsers and their updates: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.
This service allows you to create toolbars and fill them with various widgets that can be downloaded from the Apps Marketplace. Some of these widgets are monetized and can bring income to the owners of toolbars, or, as they are called, publishers.
Community Toolbar offers many monetization tools to generate revenue. For example, you can use the Active Rewards Program tool, which allows you to receive money for each active user or for users who use monetized widgets. Other monetization tools include distributing other software along with the installer, showing coupons, sponsored search queries, etc.
To distribute the created extension, the Community Toolbar provides a landing page that contains a screenshot of the created toolbar and a button for downloading it.
After you start a campaign to distribute your toolbar, you most likely need analytical data - for this, the Community Toolbar provides data (including country-by-site) on the number of installations, active users, use of widgets, but unfortunately there is not enough data on the number of product deletions.
For those who want to use the API, the service provides documentation, but does not provide online development capabilities.
The next service that deserves attention is Crossrider. It is a great online development platform targeted at developers with knowledge of JavaScript. According to the service, approximately 15 thousand developers and 700 million (!) End users use Crossrider products.
Various extensions can be created on the basis of the Crossrider platform, including sidebars, browser buttons with various content, extensions without a GUI - it all depends on the imagination and desire of the developer, and Crossrider provides excellent tools for this. The extension can be supplemented by various plugins, such as a search plugin, an
email plugin, etc. Crossrider also supports such popular browsers as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari.
For those who want to monetize the extension they are creating, Crossrider provides various tools, such as coupons, sponsored search queries, the addition of InText ads.
Crossrider offers better options for distributing extensions than the Community Toolbar - a custom landing page, the “Thank You” page (appears after installing the product), links for downloading the extension for each browser individually are just some of the options. In addition to this, Crossrider offers the creation of a product specifically for the Chrome Store and instructions for downloading it.
As for analytical data, Crossrider offers information on the number of installs / uninstalls, active users, including countries and browsers.
Without a doubt, Crossrider is the best service for developers. It contains detailed documentation, allows local development and synchronization with the online platform.
The last service that aroused my interest is NeoBars, a product of Macte! Labs ”, which has been developing browser extensions for over 5 years.
Despite the fact that the service is in beta testing, in some respects it is worthy of comparison with the “giants” mentioned above.
On the NeoBars platform, you can create various types of extensions: toolbars (InfoBars) with various widgets, Notifiers (pop-up window with various content that opens in a browser button). You can also create your own extensions using the Developer Tools and knowledge of JavaScript.
NeoBars also supports the most popular browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari) and Opera in addition to them.
This service does not use monetization tools yet, but as follows from the FAQ, the team is working on their implementation. However, publishers creating their extension using Developer Tools can add their monetization tools to the code.
To distribute the created extensions, NeoBars offers a landing page with installers for Windows / Mac and links for each browser separately.
As for analytics, here NeoBars also provides extensive capabilities - data on the number of installs / uninstalls, active users, the use of widgets in toolbars - all these data can be analyzed by country and by browser. It should be mentioned that NeoBars allows you to get analytics depending on how the extension is distributed - using the Windows / Mac installer or browser.
NeoBars allows you to develop your own extensions online using the “Developer Tools” tool, which allows developers to create modules for InfoBars and Notifiers, or create separate products.
To help developers, a debugger is created - the Debugger Tool, which is installed as a browser extension and allows you to check and debug written code.
To summarize all the above, I combined the information on each of the services in the diagram below:
To summarize briefly, the Community Toolbar currently offers only the creation of toolbars, although browser extensions are constantly evolving. Crossrider allows you to develop various extensions, but this service is available only to developers.
NeoBars brought a fresh and interesting concept to the browser extension market - to make the creation of browser extensions available for various categories of people, even for those who can not program. I am interested in how this project will develop in the future and I hope that the team will continue to develop in the chosen direction.
Thanks for reading, waiting for your thoughts in the comments.
I am familiar with browser extensions firsthand, I work in the IT business and many of the problems that I encounter in my work are successfully resolved using browser extensions.
Some time ago, I tried to find an online service that would allow you to quickly create browser extensions for various needs. During the searches, I came across three (free) services that aroused my interest, and I want to share them with you, dear hawkers.
Community toolbar
Conduit has been developing this service, and has been dealing with browser extensions for over 10 years. They claim about 260 thousand publishers and 250 million end users.
Community Toolbar supports the following popular browsers and their updates: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.
This service allows you to create toolbars and fill them with various widgets that can be downloaded from the Apps Marketplace. Some of these widgets are monetized and can bring income to the owners of toolbars, or, as they are called, publishers.
Community Toolbar offers many monetization tools to generate revenue. For example, you can use the Active Rewards Program tool, which allows you to receive money for each active user or for users who use monetized widgets. Other monetization tools include distributing other software along with the installer, showing coupons, sponsored search queries, etc.
To distribute the created extension, the Community Toolbar provides a landing page that contains a screenshot of the created toolbar and a button for downloading it.
After you start a campaign to distribute your toolbar, you most likely need analytical data - for this, the Community Toolbar provides data (including country-by-site) on the number of installations, active users, use of widgets, but unfortunately there is not enough data on the number of product deletions.
For those who want to use the API, the service provides documentation, but does not provide online development capabilities.
Crossrider
The next service that deserves attention is Crossrider. It is a great online development platform targeted at developers with knowledge of JavaScript. According to the service, approximately 15 thousand developers and 700 million (!) End users use Crossrider products.
Various extensions can be created on the basis of the Crossrider platform, including sidebars, browser buttons with various content, extensions without a GUI - it all depends on the imagination and desire of the developer, and Crossrider provides excellent tools for this. The extension can be supplemented by various plugins, such as a search plugin, an
email plugin, etc. Crossrider also supports such popular browsers as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari.
For those who want to monetize the extension they are creating, Crossrider provides various tools, such as coupons, sponsored search queries, the addition of InText ads.
Crossrider offers better options for distributing extensions than the Community Toolbar - a custom landing page, the “Thank You” page (appears after installing the product), links for downloading the extension for each browser individually are just some of the options. In addition to this, Crossrider offers the creation of a product specifically for the Chrome Store and instructions for downloading it.
As for analytical data, Crossrider offers information on the number of installs / uninstalls, active users, including countries and browsers.
Without a doubt, Crossrider is the best service for developers. It contains detailed documentation, allows local development and synchronization with the online platform.
Neobars
The last service that aroused my interest is NeoBars, a product of Macte! Labs ”, which has been developing browser extensions for over 5 years.
Despite the fact that the service is in beta testing, in some respects it is worthy of comparison with the “giants” mentioned above.
On the NeoBars platform, you can create various types of extensions: toolbars (InfoBars) with various widgets, Notifiers (pop-up window with various content that opens in a browser button). You can also create your own extensions using the Developer Tools and knowledge of JavaScript.
NeoBars also supports the most popular browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari) and Opera in addition to them.
This service does not use monetization tools yet, but as follows from the FAQ, the team is working on their implementation. However, publishers creating their extension using Developer Tools can add their monetization tools to the code.
To distribute the created extensions, NeoBars offers a landing page with installers for Windows / Mac and links for each browser separately.
As for analytics, here NeoBars also provides extensive capabilities - data on the number of installs / uninstalls, active users, the use of widgets in toolbars - all these data can be analyzed by country and by browser. It should be mentioned that NeoBars allows you to get analytics depending on how the extension is distributed - using the Windows / Mac installer or browser.
NeoBars allows you to develop your own extensions online using the “Developer Tools” tool, which allows developers to create modules for InfoBars and Notifiers, or create separate products.
To help developers, a debugger is created - the Debugger Tool, which is installed as a browser extension and allows you to check and debug written code.
To summarize all the above, I combined the information on each of the services in the diagram below:
To summarize briefly, the Community Toolbar currently offers only the creation of toolbars, although browser extensions are constantly evolving. Crossrider allows you to develop various extensions, but this service is available only to developers.
NeoBars brought a fresh and interesting concept to the browser extension market - to make the creation of browser extensions available for various categories of people, even for those who can not program. I am interested in how this project will develop in the future and I hope that the team will continue to develop in the chosen direction.
Thanks for reading, waiting for your thoughts in the comments.
