« Game of the week: physics special | Main | Mozilla isn't keen on the Apple Update Safari issue either »
Opera and browser addons
I was writing yesterday about addons for Internet Explorer 7/8 and Firefox but nothing about Opera, my prefered browser.
There are extra bits of code that can be downloaded for Opera called Widgets that perform many of the functions that addons do but with some differences.
Really they are more like desktop widgets than browser addons. Think of the Yahoo Widget Engine or the Windows Vista Sidebar. They are more informational than adding new features to the browser. My biggest annoyance is that they appear on the Taskbar and are grouped with the main Opera Window, which quickly becomes unwieldy.
I have asked Opera about this because I depend on some of the Firefox addons when designing web pages or writing blogs. The answer was that of security. Addons can have quite a lot of power when it comes to what they can do or acccess. Firefox has a signing process to ensure addons haven't been changed but I can't remember ever having seen a signed addon. I just click on install. After my virus attack the other week I suppose I should be more careful but how?
There is one Widget tool that is worth having a look at, Widgetize, the widget generator. This is a three step wizard for creating a widget link for a blog. You can take a look by clicking on the button below in Opera to see the Widget for this blog.
Posted by Tim Smith on March 26, 2008 | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/24766/27467650
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Opera and browser addons:
Comments
"Firefox has a signing process to ensure addons haven't been changed but I can't remember ever having seen a signed addon."
The signing process doesn't have anything to do with ensuring addons haven't been changed. Signing is to let you know who is providing the add-on, but if you get the addon from Mozilla's add-on site, we verify all of that for you so all you have to do is trust Mozilla, not necessarily every add-on author.
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | Mar 28, 2008 9:51:39 PM
