
Ask HN: Oldest browser extension still maintained? - achairapart
I&#x27;m doing some research on browser extensions and I wonder, what&#x27;s the oldest browser extension still maintained today? (Also, the first extension ever created?)<p>I found that The Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick was first released on June 3, 2003[0] (when Mozilla FireFox was still known as Firebird) and it is still alive today as a web extension.<p>There are other ones?<p>[0]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrispederick.com&#x2F;work&#x2F;web-developer&#x2F;history&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;
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8draco8
Wouldn't the first browser extension be something like some obscure 90s IE or
Netscape toolbar? They was not only search bars but also email checkers, media
controllers, notepads etc.

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achairapart
Yes, the infamous "browser toolbars"[0] came first. Luckily they are long
gone. I meant the first "modern", single purpose, browser extension.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_toolbar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_toolbar)

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8draco8
Well that's still will be something using NPAPI
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPAPI)
which means old. Back in the days browsers didn't have build in flash, java,
divx player etc. so they was done by extensions aka plugins back in the days,
so no, toolbars was not the only extensions in 90s. I guess there have to be
some kind of extension that went from Netscape to Firefox etc. In there late
90s there was extension pack giving a lot of functionality to IE called MyIE
(today known as Maxthon). You have to define what "modern extension" means to
you because I have a feeling that you are looking just for oldest
Firefox/Chrome extension.

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achairapart
Your feelings are right. By "modern" I mean single purpose extensions as we
use them today, a concept basically introduced by Firefox and later adopted by
Chrome. Not ways to extend the HTML functionality itself (NPAPI) nor general
purpose grayware (browser toolbars).

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cimmanom
Probably something awful like the Alexa toolbar.

