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MicrosoftEdge / MSEdgeExplainers

Home for explainer documents originated by the Microsoft Edge team
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[Side Panel] Allow third-party apps to access the browser content #646

Closed eburnette closed 1 year ago

eburnette commented 1 year ago

I'd like to create an app for the side panel that can read the currently open tab and what the user sees. This could be used for a visual assistance app or for productivity assistants. As you change tabs, the app should get an event and be able to read the new tab.

An example would be the way the Bing panel uses your browser context when improving insights or chat. When you have Insights open and browse to a new tab, it changes the side panel to match what you are looking at.

mhochk commented 1 year ago

Though still under development, this kind of app should be developable by using an Extension.

You can read more about how to render an extension in a side panel at chrome.sidePanel and Extensions in the Microsoft Edge sidebar.

Detecting the active tab changing, reading the content of the tab, and other desired functionality would then be accomplishable using the other Extension APIs. See chrome.tabs (or more generally API Reference) for more details.

eburnette commented 1 year ago

@mhochk Thanks for the tip, I tried it out and it looks like what I need.