Apple seeks extensions for Safari Extension Gallery

Through an email sent out to Safari developers this week, Apple has informed them they should start submitting their extensions so they can be included in the Safari Extension Gallery. This service will act much like the App Store in that it will give web developers an easy way to promote their extensions and find more users. Apple offers tools to help construct the extensions, but also states that if you know how to develop web pages with CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, etc, then you already know how to make extensions. Apple also requires each developer to sign their extension with a digital certificate to make sure they aren’t accessing user data, etc.

In my opinion, it was certainly necessary for Apple to add extensions to Safari if they wanted to keep up with Chrome and Firefox in terms of features. What’s great about the addition of these is that (as we saw with the iPhone) when you open up a platform to third party developers that platform receives a huge amount of functionality that wasn’t available before. When it comes to my browsing, I use Chrome, and a large part of that decision was because of all of the awesome extensions available. Better yet, these can be installed with basically one click straight into the browser.

I look forward to seeing what extensions make it into the gallery, as well as what sorts of functionality they add to the browser. Apple can take all they’ve learned from the App Store and apply it here, too, which is certainly another benefit. And since Safari already supports all of the latest web standards, developers will be able to make some pretty powerful extensions.

Via [AppleInsider]