14 DAY TRIAL // Opera made quite a few announcements yesterday including a new version of its desktop browser which will get support for browser extensions. But, while Opera may be late to the game, it's pushing forward and thinking about implementing a cross-platform extensions standard.
Opera is deeply involved with web standards and has always been a strong proponent of them. While it has no clear plans yet, Opera is proposing the idea.
It hasn't contacted other browser manufacturers, saying that it's too early for that, but it believes there should be no major problems in getting something like this working.
"It's still a bit too early for that, but we're indicating willingness to do so," Håkon Wium Lie, Opera Software's CTO, said. "We think it would be fairly easy to write up that specification, if there is willingness."
Opera will use standard web technologies for its extensions platform like HTML, JavaScript and CSS. This approach has been favored by most other browsers with support for extensions like Google Chrome and Apple Safari.
Mozila is working on a similar implementation with the Jetpack platform which may be implemented in Firefox 4.
Opera goes one step further and is using the W3C Widget specifications for its extensions platform. Furthermore it may push to make the specifications an Open Standard to which other browser makers would adhere.
An unified extensions platform would be a great boon for extension developers as it would enable them to write once for all browsers.
It would also be great for Opera since its desktop browser doesn't enjoy a huge market share. As such, developers may not be interested in learning yet another set of APIs and creating extensions for a limited number of people.
Of course, all of this depends on the willingness of other browser makers to cooperate. Even so, there may be quite some time before a standard extensions platform is adopted. Mozilla, for example, has been working on its implementation for more than a year now and is not ready for the prime time.