It has been a little quiet around my pet project Plasma Browser Integration. On one hand because I’ve been busy with life but also because browser extension APIs haven’t really gained much new functionality. Nevertheless, for Plasma’s October release I finally found the time to take care of some long-standing feature requests and/or bug reports.
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 2.0 on the Chrome Web Store and Microsoft Edge Add-ons page. This release updates the extension to Manifest Version 3 which will be required by Chrome soon. The major version bump reflects the amount of work it has taken to achieve this port.
Konqi surfing the world wide web
Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs and visited websites in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.9.1 on the Firefox Web Store. This is the Firefox release of version 1.9 that was released way back in November 2023. We’re not sure how it got stuck in Add-on review and that we didn’t realize this but whatever the reason, it’s out now! This is a maintenance release shipping a couple of important changes as well as the usual translation updates. The extension is of course fully supported under Plasma 6!
Konqi surfing the world wide web
Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs and visited websites in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.9 on the Chrome Web Store. This is a maintenance release shipping a couple of important changes as well as the usual translation updates. The extension now ships 46 different localizations and will of course continue working just fine under the upcoming Plasma 6!
Konqi surfing the world wide web
Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs and visited websites in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!
A while ago Google announced a new API level for browser extensions, named Manifest v3. You might have heard it in the news that it will impact the ability for extensions to arbitrarily filter traffic. While this particular aspect does not affect Plasma Browser Integration, there’s still a large number of behavior and API changes that we need to adapt to, especially when it comes to tampering with a website’s content. It’s getting more urgent as Chrome will stop stop running extensions still using the old version 2 by the end of this year!
Konqi cheerfully waiving at the future
Luckily, most extension features, namely KDE Connect integration, tabs and history runner, and download monitoring could be ported quite easily. However, media controls and Share API integration needed a significant rewrite in order to work with the new restrictions imposed on us, notably it is no longer possible for an extension to inject arbitrary inline JavaScript into websites. Many thanks to Fabian Vogt for refactoring this part of the extension!
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.8 on the Chrome Web Store as well as Firefox Add-Ons page. This release was originally intended to be just a bugfix update, but instead comes with new features, the usual slew of bug fixes and translation updates, but more importantly: it’s now available on the Microsoft Edge store (needs Plasma 5.21)!
Konqi surfing the world wide web
Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs and visited websites in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!
You probably have heard the news by now that Microsoft have released the Linux version of their new Chromium-based Edge web browser. Of course I’ve been waiting for this day ever since they announced the switcheroo to Chromium in order to bring Plasma Browser Integration to Edge users. It took Microsoft almost two decades to offer another web browser to a Unixoid desktop and this time around it’s based on KDE’s legacy – what a time to be alive!
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.7.6 on the Chrome Web Store as well as Firefox Add-Ons page. This release comes with a few bug fixes, performance improvements, and translation updates.
Konqi surfing the world wide web
Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!
I’m pleased to announce the immediate availability of Plasma Browser Integration version 1.7.5 on the Chrome Web Store as well as Firefox Add-Ons page. I hope you’re all safe and well in these odd times. As you can tell from the version number this is a little more than just a maintenance release. It comes with an assortment of important bug fixes, refinements, and translation updates.
Konqi surfing the world wide web
Plasma Browser Integration bridges the gap between your browser and the Plasma desktop. It lets you share links, find browser tabs in KRunner, monitor download progress in the notification center, and control music and video playback anytime from within Plasma, or even from your phone using KDE Connect!
(or: “How to do your project a disservice by calling it names”)
For a change, this blog post isn’t about notifications but don’t worry: there’s enough thrilling stuff to come in this area soon. Anyway, during Akademy 2019 in Milan I began adding KDE Itinerary capabilities to my pet project Plasma Browser Integration. The idea was to provide at a glance information about the subject of a website the user is currently viewing. It’s been a while since I worked on it but that of course just means that I’ve been busy doing other awesome things. ;)