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There have also been cases of applications installing browser extensions without the user's knowledge, making it hard for the user to uninstall the unwanted extension. As a result, there have been instances of malware, so users need to be cautious about what extensions they install. Unwanted behavior īrowser extensions typically have access to sensitive data, such as browsing history, and they have the ability to alter some browser settings, add user interface items, or replace website content. However, Apple announced that Safari 14 would conform to the Chrome API as part of the macOS 11 update. Until 2020, Apple was the lone major exception to this trend, as its API for Safari required using the Xcode tool to create extensions. Firefox extensions are now largely compatible with their Chrome counterparts. In 2015, the organization announced that the long-standing XUL and XPCOM extension capabilities of Firefox would be replaced with a less-permissive API very similar to Chrome's.
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With its own market share in decline, Mozilla also decided to conform. (Chromium is Google's open-source project that serves as the functional core of Chrome and many other browsers.) Now that Edge has the same API as Chrome, extensions can be installed directly from the Chrome Web Store. But after three years Edge still had a disappointingly small market share, so Microsoft rebuilt it as a Chromium-based browser.
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īecause of Chrome's success, Microsoft created a very similar extension API for its Edge browser, with the goal of making it easy for Chrome extension developers to port their work to Edge. In the same year, Chrome overtook Internet Explorer as the world's most popular browser, and its market share continued to grow, reaching 60% in 2018. As of June 2012, there were 750 million total installs of extensions and other content hosted on the store. Beta testing for this capability began in 2009, and the following year Google opened the Chrome Web Store. While that goal is unlikely to be achieved, the majority of browsers already use the same or very similar APIs due to the popularity of Google Chrome.Ĭhrome was the first browser with an extension API based solely on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In 2015, a community working group formed under the W3C to create a single standard application programming interface (API) for browser extensions. Microsoft Edge added extension support in 2016. Opera began supporting extensions in 2009, and both Google Chrome and Safari did so the following year. Firefox has supported extensions since its launch in 2004. Internet Explorer was the first major browser to support extensions, with the release of version 4 in 1999.