An Introduction to Web Extensions

Creating Awesome RSS has been quite a learning experience. I don’t mean that it has been extremely difficult or complicated, but that the process has involved a series of new experiences that were only subtly different from what I was already familiar with.

I started working with web extensions toward the end of 2017 when I found Share Backported, which had been created to replace some social features that were being removed from Firefox. I had already created something similar in JavaScript, but it was for adding share buttons into a website rather than being through an add-on. Later that day, I submitted a pull request to the add-on developer and, when it was merged, I had made my first contribution to add-on development.

Creating Awesome RSS

Soon after, I was working on an add-on to re-implement another feature that had recently been removed from Firefox — the RSS subscribe button that showed up in the URL / Awesome bar when an RSS or Atom feed was found in a page. By the end of the weekend, I had my very own add-on working.

After publishing the first version, it gained in popularity much faster than I had expected. It didn’t come close to something like AdBlock, but it seemed that I was far from alone in wanting that little icon back in the Awesome Bar. Dozens, then hundreds, and then thousands of users installed my little add-on, and positive ratings and reviews started coming in. Even more surprising was the issues and even a pull request. Not long after first publishing Awesome RSS, I received a pull request from someone who had begun the ongoing process of internationalization.

More ratings and reviews came in, and I started noticing that all of the negative ratings were not accompanied by a review. Ratings were typically either five stars or one star, with very few exceptions. And, due to the lack of review for the single star ratings, I really don’t know why those users were unhappy.

Many of the issues that were opened were either out of my control (such as another add-on behaving irregularly), the result of neglect of site developers (not properly providing <link>s for feeds), or the natural and inevitable result of the immaturity and instability of Firefox’s implementation of web extensions (changes to default behavior).

A Request for Help

At the time of writing this, Awesome RSS is approaching 5,000 daily users, and about 55% of those users are using it in a language that is not their primary language.

I am asking for help translating Awesome RSS into different languages. I would really like to at least support the top 5 languages before the next minor version release (1.3.0). While I could go copy/paste happy with Google Translate, I’m sure that will result in at least a few cases where the result reads more like an email about an inheritance from a distant relative you don’t really have. Many of the messages are single words in English, and I’m pretty sure the lack of context will result in some terrible translations.

I have created several issues, one for each language, and all of them require nothing more than filling in some strings in a JSON file to complete. If you are interested in assisting with translations, check out issues labeled “translations”. You can also check out “good first issue” and “help wanted”.

{
  "extensionName": {
    "message": "Awesome RSS",
    "description": "Name of the extension."
  },
  "extensionDescription": {
    "message": "Puts an RSS/Atom subscribe button back in URL bar",
    "description": "Description of the extension displayed in the add-ons manager."
  },
  "...": {}
}