Developing Userscripts for Chrome (caveats)

To develop Chrome extensions, crx is the best way. But the user scripts that are developed in general for Greasemonkey can also be delivered for Chrome, if a few easy rules are followed.

1. @required and @resource don't work.

By default, atleast for now, These two Userscript metatags donot work on Chrome. If you need to load a js file, instead of using @required - try to use document.createElement. Similarly with @resource.

2. Some GreaseMonkey helper methods don't work or are restricted.

Methods with GM_ prefix from userscript api may not work. Particularly, unsafeWindow, GM_registerMenuCommand, GM_setValue, or GM_getValue are not supported. GM_xmlhttpRequest will work but not only on the same domain.

3. @includes are not shown while installing.
This may not be a deal breaker for developers, but sure is for users. The patterns used in @include is not shown while installing. Instead a generic message is shown as below. This message may scare the users away.



To over come this, add @match and show the @include pattern there. The message window pics up the domain portion of the pattern.



This actually can be used maliciously. A developer may install a script with a different include pattern and show a different match pattern, there by luring the users to install a malicious script. Although Chrome follows the @include pattern to add script to the page. Just the installation window pops open with @match pattern. Please use this for responsibly.

Here is comments from The Chromium source that explains the reasoning, valid/invalid patterns @match can take:

// Examples of valid patterns:
// - http://*/*
// - http://*/foo*
// - https://*.google.com/foo*bar
// - file://monkey*
// - http://127.0.0.1/*
//
// Examples of invalid patterns:
// - http://* -- path not specified
// - http://*foo/bar -- * not allowed as substring of host component
// - http://foo.*.bar/baz -- * must be first component
// - http:/bar -- scheme separator not found
// - foo://* -- invalid scheme
// - chrome:// -- we don't support chrome internal URLs
//
// Design rationale:
// * We need to be able to tell users what 'sites' a given URLPattern will
//   affect. For example "This extension will interact with the site
//   'www.google.com'.
// * We'd like to be able to convert as many existing Greasemonkey @include
//   patterns to URLPatterns as possible. Greasemonkey @include patterns are
//   simple globs, so this won't be perfect.
// * Although we would like to support any scheme, it isn't clear what to tell
//   users about URLPatterns that affect data or javascript URLs, so those are
//   left out for now.