Question

I’m a new chrome extension developer, and I was going through the Chrome tutorial on making a “Hello World” extension, here’s my code:

     {
      "name": "My First Extension",
      "version": "1.0",
      "manifest_version": 2,
      "description": "The first extension that I made.",
      "browser_action": {
       "default_icon": "icon.png"
      },
       "permissions": [
       "http://api.flickr.com/"
      ]
      }

When I went to load the unpacked extension it said the manifest file was missing or unreadable. Yes I have the image in a folder with it and it is correctly named manifest.json

Answer 1

Something that commonly happens is that the manifest file isn’t named properly. Double check the name (and extension) and be sure that it doesn’t end with .txt (for example).

In order to determine this, make sure you aren’t hiding file extensions:

1. Open Windows Explorer
2. Go to Folder and Search Options > View tab
3. Uncheck Hide extensions for known file types

Also, note that the naming of the manifest file is, in fact, case sensitive, i.e. manifest.json != MANIFEST.JSON.