Hello.

I've made a couple of small changes to the blog. I removed the personal journal section and added my projects to the RSS feed so you can see what I've been working on with Generative AI. Happy New Year!

Safari 12.1 introduces significant updates for web developers. Notably, Apple now recommends using the Payment Request API for Apple Pay implementations on the web. This shift aligns with broader industry efforts towards standardized payment methods, though it contrasts with Google's prior emphasis on their Google Pay library. Additionally, the new Web Share API empowers developers to trigger native sharing functionalities on the user's device via navigator.share(). This allows for seamless content sharing across various apps and contacts, enhancing user experience. While the Share Target API is still anticipated, this release marks substantial progress in web sharing capabilities.

In this post, I address the question of how to detect Chrome Extension updates. While there isn't a single API call for this, we can achieve it using the Management API's onInstalled event, which fires upon both installation and updates. By maintaining a record of installed extensions and their versions, we can compare the version in the onInstalled callback with our existing record, identify updates, and notify the user when an update occurs.

I've taken my feed off Squeet due to repeated updates to old posts, which wasn't very useful given the low subscriber count. This change should prevent further issues.

I've been busy with side projects lately, so the blog has been quiet. One project should be released this week. Another is a .Net 2.0/ASP.Net 2.0 hosted site for examples from this blog (and to help me learn .Net). It's behind schedule, but will eventually host controls, tutorials, etc. More info soon on the first project. And, btw, the FIELDSET tag is awesome!

I'm considering adding an email subscription option for blog updates, as an alternative to RSS/ATOM feeds. Would you subscribe to email updates if offered?