Factotum

User-defined commands for Chrome.

Remember Ubiquity for Firefox? It was a CLI-addict's dream. When I left Firefox behind in favour of Chrome, I really, really missed Ubiquity.

This is my attempt at making something similar and hopefully better, though definitely without goals quite so lofty: there's no attempt at natural-language parsing (nor do I ever want there to be), and it has no custom API to make the writing of a Factotum Command (i.e. Fcommand) easier or prettier. If anything, it generally adheres to the early Soviet space program's design sensibilities: utterly spare interface, myriad sharp edges, and no concessions to beauty (it would be made of concrete and steel if those things were available via Chrome API). This extension is for people who type in a command and want the same thing to happen every time.

Most importantly, it is a work in progress, as it is also a test-bed for me to muck around with fancy new HTML5 features that Chrome has been accumulating.

Be aware that you can fuck up your computer and possibly your life quite badly with this extension. It allows Chrome to execute arbitrary code with full privileges. This means a thoughtlessly-executed command line running a suspiciously-written Fcommand can do things like:

1. Send all your porn bookmarks to your employer.
2. Email your bank-account information to North Korean hackers.
3. Render your computer completely unusable.

This extension is intended for developers and people who understand not only Javascript, but probably Chrome extensions as well.

I'm not joking. Do not fuck around with this unless you know what you are doing. If you shoot yourself in the face, don't come crying to the person who gave you a free gun full of free bullets.

Setting up a local package

1. Install Node.js if you don't already have it. You'll need NodeJS and npm.
2. Run make setup. It will install the necessary npm packages.
3. Run make.
4. Enable developer mode in chrome://extensions/.
5. Click on the Load unpacked extension... button and select the directory containing manifest.json.
6. As of 2014-12-20, there is a built-in Fcommand that loads jQuery into the current page. Enter f loadjq into Chrome's omnibox and (if you're not on a chrome:// or about:// page), jQuery will be loaded and you should get a notification after a few seconds that says which jQuery version it is.

Modifying stuff

• After making changes, re-run make and then reload the extensions page. Depending on your changes, you may need to reload pages that now have an old version of the content and injected scripts.

• Take a look at example/load-jquery.html to see what goes into writing an Fcommand.

• Take a look at TODO to see what my thinking is on things that are Work In Progress.

• Expect nothing to work much of the time and that it will be difficult to the point of impossibility to use. It's holding at version 0.0.1 for a reason.