CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-chromegoogle-chrome-extensionsidebar
Exitus
Exitus

Reputation: 61

Using panels in chrome extensions

I was wondering, normally chrome extensions appear in their little area below their icon, but how would I make one that has it's own little space on a side of the browser, like FireBug lite does for chrome? Where it pushes the page up and docks at the bottom.
I have seen the sidebar in the 'experimental.sidebar' chrome api, but I don't want to use it because you have to start chrome with the command line switch --enable-experimental-extension-apis, and not many people would do that.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4385

Answers (2)

ssokolow
ssokolow

Reputation: 15345

Basically, until sidebars graduate from experimental status, you use a content script to set a big margin or padding on one side of body or html, inject a position: fixed element into the current page overlaid on that margin, and then draw to that.

Anything that needs to persist between pages gets stored by the extension and you re-create the pseudo-sidebar every time a page is loaded.

See the Firebug Lite or StumbleUpon extensions for examples.

Upvotes: 3

Mohamed Mansour
Mohamed Mansour

Reputation: 40179

People usually use DOM manipulation. You can take a look at FireBugs source to see how they did the DOM. It is quite slow, but until the sidebars go out of experimental, that is the only way to do it right now.

Upvotes: 0

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