Marketing To Developers

If you’re a developer and have ever tried to market your own app or website, you’ve most likely discovered that the biggest challenge isn’t the building but the marketing of your app. When trying to come up with creative ways to spread the word about my weather extension, I came across Justin Jackson. Justin has a great story (video) of how he has been able to go independent selling books and courses on helping developers market their products. He offers a lot of free content with some great tips and strategies. Read More

Chrome Extension Inline Installation

You’ve probably come across extensions that allow you to install them from their website without ever going to the Chrome extension store. This is what Chrome calls inline installation and it’s a great way to make it easier for users to install an extension.

Overview

Inline installation requires 3 parts. A link tag in the head of your website, a call to the JavaScript function chrome.webstore.install() and lastly the extension must be assigned to the domain you want to use for inline installation. Read More

Animated Badge Icon

Weather Extension was recently updated to have a spinning indicator in the badge icon to let the user know the extension is loading when it is clicked. I wanted to give the user immediate feedback. The challenge was that the badge toolbar icon is limited to static images. I was able to get around this by using canvas and generating multiple images that update the icon. I’ve haven’t come across anything like this so I thought I would share.

Javascript JSFiddle example: https://jsfiddle.net/w7t2fe0j/

Read More

How to Edit Global Git Ignore

Recently I was trying to add some folders to my global .gitignore file on windows. Unfortunately I ran into some issues. After some searching, I couldn’t come across a solution that worked for me. Here are the steps that worked for me.

Add to Global Git ignore Windows

  1. git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_global (Add .gitignore_global as the global gitignore file in your global git config)
  2. notepad %USERPROFILE%\.gitignore_global (Create and edit .gitignore_global in your home directory using cmd)

Add to Global Git ignore Mac

  1. git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_global (Add .gitignore_global as the global gitignore file in your global git config)
  2. sudo nano ~/.gitignore_global(can edit your .gitignore_global file and add any files or folder you would like to ignore. Use ctrl + y to save and exit)

Leave a comment if these steps helped in any way!