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Manifest V3 usage

Manifest V3 is Google's replacement API for third-party Extensions on the Chromium web engine. The announcement meant the retirement of the long-established Manifest V2 Extensions for all Chromium browsers. RetroTxt 5 uses Manifest V3, while prior editions use Manifest V2.

Firefox has limited support for Manifest V3, and there is no priority or a timeline for its full implementation.

Benefits for RetroTxt

Despite the negative attention from the technology press about Google and ad-blocking, the Manifest version 3 comes with several benefits for RetroTxt.

  1. The use of service workers that make the source code easier to layout and debug. RetroTxt v5 is now more resilient, and the migration fixed some previously hard-to-trace behavior bugs.
  2. Service workers also mean future features will be simpler to implement and test.
  3. Unfocused tabs can run the RetroTxt process while in the background.
  4. Offers an improved and safer permissions system, which means RetroTxt can work out of the box with less scary-looking permissions requests.