Question

I want to develop a simple Chrome extension in C++, using NPAPI, which does the job of dumping the HTML content of the current page onto a file. I don’t have much expertise in developing plugins/extensions. How do I get started on this?

Answer 1

1 – Create a Extension…
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/getstarted.html

2 – Create a NPAPI plugin…
http://colonelpanic.net/2009/03/building-a-firefox-plugin-part-one/

3 – On the manifest of your extension add the plugin…

"plugins": [
    { "path": "your_npapi_plugin.dll" }    
  ],

4 – On your extension background page create the plugin

<script>
var plugin = document.getElementById("MyNPAPIPluginId");
...
</script>

5 – Create a javascript that you will use as a content script injected on every page.
On that script communicate with your npapi scriptable object and do the work you want to do.

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How do I get the value of MyNPAPIPluginId? All I have is the name of the DLL?

On your background page when you add the tag of your plugin, you place the id

<embed type="application/my-plugin-mimetype" id="MyNPAPIPluginId">

On Windows you add the MIMEType on the resource file of the DLL, add a entry with:

VALUE "MIMEType", "application/my-plugin-mimetype"