I have chrome packaged app in Chrome Web Store and extension which
should communicate with app and extend its functionality.
Is there any way to automatically install extension when user
installing app from chrome store?
No, there isn't. Not even the strongest API for managing extensions, chrome.management, can install something not already installed.
I don't need to say why this would be an obviously bad idea from security perspective.
What you should do is explain why you need it, and provide a link to Web Store install page.
Related
I wanted to know is there a way by which we can check whether our website's PWA is installed or not by the user on the device?
I have done with the " add to home screen banner" but what if the user comes the second time and we need to check. Please help thanks in advance.
You may refer with this documentation. Be noted that if the user has installed your Progressive Web App through the old Add to Homescreen method (i.e, in anything prior to Chrome 58) then it is not possible to detect if your app is installed. Chrome added your site to the Homescreen as a bookmark, and this data was not exposed to the system.
However, if the user has installed the web app using the new Web APK functionality, it is possible to determine if your web app is installed. If you know the package name of your Web APK then you can use the context.getPackageManager().getApplicationInfo() API to determine if it is installed. Please note that this is experimental.
We have chrome and FF extensions which works with a native messaging app. Recently we developed edge extension and a UWP app which works in the same way. Now the user has to install two separate native messaging apps if they want use any chrome/FF/Edge browsers.
My question is, is it possible for Chrome/FF extension talk to windows UWP app?
Unfortunately no. On Windows, both Chrome and Firefox use the registry to locate the native applications manifest, and Windows Store apps are forbidden from writing to the registry. (ref: Prepare to package an app (Desktop Bridge)
If something changes (Store apps gain the ability to alter the registry, or Chrome and Firefox introduce an alternative way to locate the manifest), then it might be possible. Though likely not via the UWP app directly. UWP apps appear to support standard input and output, but the way they are run prevents access to it. It might however be possible to create an intermediary Win32 app that can communicate with the UWP app via the AppService and the browser extension via stdio.
Afterthought: Enpass Password Manager (win32) was ported to the Windows Store reportedly because of API issues, and has a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox. Might be worth asking them how they pulled it off. I did some more digging, and figured it out. localhost loopback, a custom url scheme, web sockets, and browser verifications is how they are doing it. Not an ideal solution, but it seems to work.
Lets say i have an app and i want it to be executable standalone. I've found that you can do that with normal webpages, webapps, using https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit.
But if its chrome packaged app how do you do that.
I know it's possible as you can see in slides it uses webkit.
https://speakerdeck.com/u/zcbenz/p/node-webkit-app-runtime-based-on-chromium-and-node-dot-js
Theoretically it is possible but you will have to implement by hand all of the chrome apis you use in your chrome app
i need my chrome extension to be downloaded and installed automatically, when user access my website from Google chrome.
my extension is stored in my web-server, should i need to store the extension in google web store for the above purpose.
is it possible to provide a shortcut to my extension in desktop also.
i am able to manually install the extension, but need to installed automatically using java-script or any other method
i have found some similar post using registry editing etc, but this will not meet my requirement.
Security restrictions prevent an extension from being installed from a web site other than the Chrome Web Store. You cannot bypass this restriction without control of the end-user machine.
The Web Store does not provide any mechanism for automatic extension installation. (This is a very good thing.)
On a standard Chrome installation, the only way to install an extension outside of the Web Store is by dragging a crx file onto the Extensions preferences page (chrome://extensions).
If you have administrative control of the target computers that the extension is to be instaled on, you can write a script that installs the extension.
I have a chrome packaged app that I update form time to time - when I'm creating an update I want to send email to subscribed customers with a link the that extension -that will launch it.
Anyone knows if there is a chrome url scheme i can use?
Currently this is not possible, but there is an API proposal and an implementation being developed for a chrome-app://appid URL schema that would do pretty much what you describe.
Follow the status here
I also want to be able to do this. It seems that one possible solution is to install both an extension and a packaged app, and have the extension register a context menu that then communicates with the app, or something similar.