Browser extensions are underrated: the promise of hackable software

People think of browser extensions as brittle: a site changes its CSS selectors, and bam the extension breaks.

But I think the opposite: it's wild how *resilient* browser extensions often are!

Consider the context: I can extend any aspect of a webapp UI, with zero support or foresight by the original app devs... and it actually works?

I've built exten... See more

Today’s web browsers are relatively composable - you can add new functionality and features with extensions. Imagine if web browsers were locked down, and you had to choose between the core feature set alone: Chrome with built-in casting, Firefox with Pocket, or Brave with a crypto wallet. Thankfully you don't have to choose and be left so wanting ... See more

This brings me to a problem that we've been noodling on for several years, and to my mind, it still a critical open question. So when you're trying to build these end-user extensible, digital document systems, there's a few desiderata that you want: You want to be very fast. You want to be safe, in the sense of, end users aren't going to be injecti... See more

But regardless of missing features, the biggest disappointment of all developer tools in every browser is the unanswered question that lies at the very heart of them all: what about the fun? Because today I see DevTools as merely a command line for the web (the web developers won whilst the cypher punks and the dark web hacker dweebs lost). There’s... See more

If you know to look, you can feel the difference between software crafted with care for its users and systems of vacuous tradition that just happen to be good at producing the vapid fodder of convenience.

Principles for growable tools

There are three critical pieces to building a tool that can grow around its users over time.

1. Design around play . Sometimes I call this design around experimentation . Using the tool for day-to-day work should involve playing and experimenting with what’s possible with the tool. Whether that’s writing small programs to

... See more

If you assume that the pace of change in consumer-facing Internet stays high, and that it gets more compelling over time, then in the long run the only options are a) be careful what you use, or b) accept that you're outsourcing a growing share of your decisions to product managers and growth hackers who do not necessarily have your interests at he... See more

And worst of all, we’ve lost sight of the most salient part about computers: their malleability. We’ve acquiesced the creation of our virtual worlds, where we now spend most of our time, to the select few who can spend the millions to hire enough software engineers. So many of the photons that hit our eyes come from purely fungible pixels, yet for ... See more