How to check if browser supports extensions? - google-chrome-extension

I have written a chrome extension for my website, but discovered that extensions do not work on mobile browsers for chrome. Right now, the website checks if the user has the extension installed. If the user doesn't, the website asks the user to install the extension via inline install.
The issue is that I don't want to prompt a user to install an extension if they are running chrome on a mobile devise because it won't work. I would like to add a check for the ability of a browser to run extensions instead of user agent sniffing for mobile devise. Modernizr doesn't seem to have a check for this. Any ideas?

if (window.chrome.runtime === undefined) {
// If it is Chrome it has not extension support
}

Related

Is it possible to detect a user's browser(like IE11) and then redirect them to another(like Chrome)?

I have an application that does not work in IE. I am assigned the task of redirecting the user to Chrome if they open the application in any other browser. Is this possible? If not, how can I detect what browser a user is utilizing so that I may display a banner that instructs them to use Chrome?
I have researched this topic but have not found any documentation on this besides the jQuery Browser Rejection plugin
The Dream goal would be to launch chrome if the user has it installed or suggest a download if the user does not have it installed

Can you disable the welcome message that shows when a chrome extension is first installed?

Whenever a chrome extension is installed, Chrome shows a welcome message popup:
Is there any way for this to be disabled when building the extension?
I believe there is no way to do this, since obviously it's the default behavior of chrome, which means to let user know there is a new extension installed, how to manage extensions and to prevent extension is silently installed in background.
When building extension by ourselves, we can do something when extension is first installed, by listening to chrome.runtime.onInstalled event, usually we will popup a web page or navigate user to specific sites. However, we can determine if we need this behavior, but we can't change the default behavior of chrome browser extension.
chrome.runtime.onInstalled.addListener(function() {...});
Source developer.chrome.com
I do believe that this is a good place to start.

Linking my website to a Google Chrome extension that has a Firefox alternative

I want a link on my website to a Google Chrome extension that has a Firefox alternative.
Questions:
How do I link to a browser(Google Chrome/Firefox) plugin from a web-page?
How do I decide which link to show based on users browser? In other words: when a person enters my web page using Firefox I want
to display a link to Firefox plugin, if he's using Google Chrome -
link to Google Chrome plugin.
Both browsers present an API to initiate an extension/add-on install. You can actually use those to differentiate between browsers.
First, detection:
if(window.InstallTrigger) {
// This is Firefox
} else if(window.chrome && window.chrome.webstore) {
// This is Chrome
} else {
// Something else
}
Next, you want to trigger the installation. This probably requires a user gesture - so present a button/link for the user to click.
I'm not an expert on Firefox, but here's the relevant documentation. I don't know how that interacts with Gallery, if you have the add-on published there.
For Chrome, you need to link the Web Store item to the site in question to use inline install. Once that is done, you can follow the procedure from relevant documentation.
Consider that you also want to detect if the extension is already installed. To do that, you need to expose something visible to the page, or modify the page, from the extension.
Again, I'm not an expert on FF, but here's the canonical Chrome question.

how to install a Chrome extension in http://example.com/hello.crx on Opera silently

Chrome is very restrictive in side loading extensions (not through the Chrome Web Store). I need a way to install an extension for all users of my domain silently. Can Opera do that?
Thanks!
A quick google found this: http://www.quora.com/Is-it-possible-to-either-stop-users-from-disabling-or-uninstalling-a-Chrome-extension which referenced the following links:
http://dev.chromium.org/administrators/policy-list-3#ExtensionInstallForcelist
https://sites.google.com/site/lock5stat/offline-use/installing-for-all-users
Per the Chromium docs you can modify the policies of the OS can force install for all users.

How to create a link/button on a web-site to download and install browser extensions

I'm creating a web-site for a company which has browser extensions for Google Chrome, FireFox and Opera. And there's a page from where the site users are intended to download and install those extensions. However I'm not sure how this should technically work. What kind of links/buttons should I create for the users to download those extensions?
If your going to host the crx yourself you should look at these two links....
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/hosting.html
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/autoupdate.html
If your going to use the Web Store to host your extension then you should look at this link....
http://code.google.com/chrome/webstore/docs/inline_installation.html

Resources