quickbuild/templates/Crossover Extension/README.md

A mature, feature-complete application generator with an emphasis on speed

# Extension Boilerplate

## Features

<dl>
  <dt>Write once and deploy to Chrome, Opera & Firefox</dt>
  <dd>
    Based on WebExtensions. It also includes a tiny polyfill to bring uniformity to the APIs exposed by different browsers.
  </dd>
</dl>

<dl>
  <dt>Live-reload</dt>
  <dd>
    Your changes to CSS, HTML & JS files will be relayed instantly without having to manually reload the extension. This ends up saving a lot of time and improving the developer experience.
  </dd>
</dl>

<dl>
  <dt>Sensible starting point</dt>
  <dd>
    This comes with a gulp based workflow that converts modern <strong>ES6</strong> JavaScript and <strong>SCSS</strong> to JS/CSS. 
    Scripts are transpiled using Babel and bundled using Browserify.
    Sourcemaps are available for both JS and SCSS.
  </dd>
</dl>

<dl>
  <dt>Sketch (.sketch) assets for icons and promo images</dt>
  <dd>
    A .sketch file is included in the resources directory. This has all the icons and promo images that will be needed while uploading the extensions to the app stores.
  </dd>
</dl>

<dl>
  <dt>Easily configurable and extendable</dt>
  <dd>
    The gulpfile is easily understandable and configurable. If you want to add additional tasks or remove un-used ones, you can easily tweak that file to suit your needs.
  </dd>
</dl>

<dl>
  <dt>Platform specific & Environment specific variables.</dt>
  <dd>
    You might need to specify different data variables based on your environment. For example, you might want to use a localhost API endpoint during development and a production API endpoint once the extension is submitted to the appstore. You can specify such data in the json files inside `config` directory.

    You can also set custom data variables based on the platform (different variable for Chrome, FF, Opera).
  </dd>
</dl>



## Installation
1. Run `npm install`
2. Run `npm run build`

##### Load the extension in Chrome & Opera
1. Open Chrome/Opera browser and navigate to chrome://extensions
2. Select "Developer Mode" and then click "Load unpacked extension..."
3. From the file browser, choose to `extension-boilerplate/build/chrome` or (`extension-boilerplate/build/opera`)


##### Load the extension in Firefox
1. Open Firefox browser and navigate to about:debugging
2. Click "Load Temporary Add-on" and from the file browser, choose `extension-boilerplate/build/firefox`


## Developing
The following tasks can be used when you want to start developing the extension and want to enable live reload - 

- `npm run chrome-watch`
- `npm run opera-watch`
- `npm run firefox-watch`


## Packaging
Run `npm run dist` to create a zipped, production-ready extension for each browser. You can then upload that to the appstore.