[Discussion] Make prosemirror-dev-tools as a browser extension.

[ocavue]

Currently, prosemirror-dev-tools is a npm package. Maybe we can make it as a browser extension, like react-devtools and vue-devtools.

Benefits:

• Don't neet to Injecte project. prosemirror-dev-tools is based on React. That means users have to install react and react-dom to use this tool, even their projects don't need react. By making a browser extension, developers won't need to install React as well as prosemirror-dev-tools itself, which make the project dependencies clearer.
• Isolation. The dev tools won't float above the website. Instead, it will keep in the devtools window.

Costs:

• Study curve. I haven't created a browser extension as big as prosemirror-dev-tools before. Write a browser extension is some kind of challenge. I may build a prototype to check the feasibility of this idea if I have some free time in the next few weeks.
• Multi browsers support. Although Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, Firefox also has a lot of users. If we create extensions for both Chrome and Firefox, this project will become more complex and need extra working.

[d4rkr00t]

Hi,
Thanks for raising this. There are actually attempts to do it. Some of my coworkers are actually working on implementing this, I hope they will finish it soon. Though there are some technical issues with dev tools being a browser extension, namely: serialising plugin states is not always possible as there might be non-serialisible properties (functions), prosemirror state itself has circular dependencies, etc... It's all solvable but takes time...

[ocavue]

Cool! Looking forward to it. Thank you so much for your guys' amazing work, really appreciate it.

Have you made any progress on this? Is it coming together for you? Thanks!!

[neatcoding]

https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/prosemirror-developer-tools-chrome-extension/5154