[Feature Request]: Chrome Extension

[alturkovic]

Any plans to make a Chrome Extension?
Something like @desmondw snowflake would be very useful.
Great job btw!

[reicolina]

I wouldn't mind volunteering to work on the extension if that's something that would benefit the community (a realistic use case) @fczbkk, any thoughts?

[fczbkk]

What should the extension do?

[reicolina]

If it is anything like https://github.com/desmondw/snowflake then I would imagine that the CSS selector will be copied to the clipboard when the user clicks on an element while the extension is turned on.

@alturkovic, any comments?

[alturkovic]

If it is anything like https://github.com/desmondw/snowflake then I would imagine that the CSS selector will be copied to the clipboard when the user clicks on an element while the extension is turned on.

@alturkovic, any comments?

Exactly what I was thinking about, thanks for clarifying 😄

[fczbkk]

Yeah, ok. I should have been more specific. Let me explain:

• What would be a use case?
• Who would be a target audience?

For example, if the target audience is non-technical users, who for some reason need to generate CSS selector, then it should work exactly as Snowflake. No options, no complicated UI, just click somewhere and the selector for topmost clicked element is copied to clipboard. But this does not make sense to me, because I can't think of a reason why would non-technical user need an extension for that.

Then there are users at the opposite end of the technical spectrum. Developers who need to select specific element and have access to selector generator options. Such tool should probably integrated into the browser's developer tools. That would make the extension complicated, with lots of UI elements. Is it worth to create and upkeep such a complex project? How many people would really use such tool? Wouldn't it be easier for these highly technical people to just copy/past the library into console and then use getCssSelector($0)?

Or is it for the users somewhere in between? What would be the ideal level of complexity and UI for them and their use case?

So... what should the extension do?

[alturkovic]

My target audience are people who are not very technically proficient but are still somewhat technical. They are a support team that needs to frequently configure CSS selectors for our product. They usually need to do exactly what you said, open the inspector and find the element they need to setup, but it is usually very long and very specific and error-prone.

Having a Chrome extension that they can use to click on an element and get the shortest CSS selector would make our product more resilient to change. It would also reduce the manual corrections they usually need to do because their selectors are frequently too specific.

WDYT?

[marktamis]

The main user case i would say is to rapidly find unique selectors for ui test automation, such as for selenium, puppeteer, playwright etc

[fczbkk]

Progress update: I created a prototype. It seems to be working fine. Now I need to add some usable UI for this.

[alturkovic]

Did you make any further progress on this?