And please don’t read ”Do More” in Casey Neistat’s voice and tattoo it on your right lower arm as he did. I don’t mean this as a hustle-culture battle cry.
Do more of what you want.
Nine days ago, I received an email from a startup.
They saw my rant blog post about the rather crappy state of cross-browser plugin building.
They want to work with me but let’s see how we’ve got here.
What happens when you Do
My post was written out of frustration after wasting hours and hours on getting something to work in one browser while not breaking the other.
The browser-plugin building landscape - not the level when you already have access to ES6, TypeScript, and the perfect land of JavaScript, but the part that comes before that. The manifest files, the browser stores, the review process, the debugging before your extension even starts up, well - that’s a place where you don’t want to be.
So to help you a bit, I compiled that rant and added some tips and code snippets I used to solve the incompatibility issues.
I had so much fun!
By the beginning of November, I proudly published Tweton, my browser plugin, in both Google Chrome and Firefox stores.
Consistency (sometimes) is nonsense
Also, between October 10 and November 7, I haven’t written a single blog post.
I could have put out something there to keep my streak going. 10 Free browser plugins to increase productivity?
Consistency is the key, right?
If you want to repurpose the five things you have to say about writing, building an online audience, or curating viral tweet recipes, don’t stop: It’s consistency all the way.
But this becomes BS territory very fast. Instead
Do more (of what you want)
You could go on with your business, let your creativity wander, and try things that inspire you.
To me, the inspiration for building a browser plugin came from @tdinh_me. I’m a long-time user of his BlackMagic plugin.
Having this urge to build browser plugins so far generated me (not counting likes, impressions, and page views):
Three blog posts, all wrapped up nicely in a cross-browser-extension-building series on my blog
500 USD from Supabase for writing about browser plugins
a potential contract
the first-hand experience that people are looking to build browser plugins, and they’re struggling with it (endless YouTube videos for my channel)
This is a lot, and I earned this simply by doing.
Do more.
See you in the next one.
- Akos