Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, and this is the All Play podcast. So I always start these episodes with so and give some weird excuse about why I haven't been able to have the episode out as, regularly as I wanna be. The truth is, you know, the kids have been in these summer camps are all different hours of the day.

And the normal time when I try to sneak in a recording, which is typically in, like, the afternoon of the day before I have to head upstairs, just has been getting kind of, taken from me. So it's gonna make do with what I can. But, last couple weeks, I just wanna do a basically a follow-up on where I left last week and a few updates since. So I was working on opengraphs.com and working on the website as well as some tools I was talking about. I ended up doing the browser extensions and actually submitted the browser extensions to the four, well, I guess four of the five extension stores.

So I I submitted it to the Google the Google Chrome store or Chrome Web Store. Sorry. Chrome Web Store, the Firefox add ons, the Microsoft Edge add ons, as well as the Opera add ons. And so far, three of the four have actually already been processed and approved and are live right now. So the Google Chrome, Chrome Web Store is live.

Firefox add ons is live, and Opera add ons or not Opera add ons. Microsoft Edge is live. Still waiting on Opera and haven't submitted to Safari yet because of the whole Xcode, submittal thing. It just kinda adds another level to it. But gonna explore that, but also know that there's a few things I need to fine tune in the extensions probably before I do that.

So extensions. It's a wild world world out there. There's a lot of nuance as far as the differences between how the extensions perform across browsers, across even browser variants. The stuff that I'm finding as far as, like, the the Google Chrome Chrome and the Chrome based browsers, there's differences obviously there as well. So Google Chrome, the way that I have it set up right now is it uses the v three manifest, and the app launches by default in this side panel, which is really cool because the side panel, if you don't I know if I actually haven't used any extensions that utilize this yet, but also I I guess maybe I haven't been exploring all the extensions that are out there for offer right now.

But I guess maybe I should explore some more just to make sure that OpenGraphs is, you know, up to snuff with the state of extensions. But the side panel is really awesome. The basically, what you end up doing is you launch up the OpenGraphs browser extension. It launches in the side panel, and then, I have a little toggle on the the extension to where as you navigate around pages on your site, it automatically loads the OpenGraph data for each of those pages, which is pretty cool. So it's the OpenGraph data.

It's the metadata, you know, as far as favicon title description, as well as canonical URL, and then also the Twitter card stuff. So that's working really good. I'm gonna see if I can try to, like, thread the needle with the Google Chrome extension or the Chrome extension and figure out a way to basically both support the non native Chrome browser. So essentially, things like Arc and Dia as well as the native one. The the only thing is that poses a little problem there is, basically, the default action when you click that extension, it'll open it in a pop up.

But I need to figure out a way to basically tell whether or not you're in a browser that supports the side panel. And if you are, try to then launch it directly into the side panel view. And if not, I'll have to give, you know, I think you can launch it via, like, some sort of context menu, which is kinda weird. Maybe I might be able to put a a button in the pop up itself. I don't know.

It poses a lot of, like, kinda wonkiness as far as how you structure the extension and when you have access to something because the unfortunate thing is, basically, ARC and Dia technically have the calls. It's just they they go nowhere. They don't do anything. So they kinda just get gobbled up. I need to see if there's a way to there's doesn't seem like there's, like, any sort of, like, error promise handling on that call that will then let you kind of fall back into launching a pop up or launching the side panel.

This is a little bit wonky. But regardless, they're live. So if you wanna install it, install it in Chrome and it works good. Microsoft Edge also side panel support, which is awesome and works really great on Edge. So Edge is looking good.

Firefox and and Opera, the pop up experience isn't the greatest. You know, it's nice to actually be able to reference this stuff, especially the the auto loading of the page. Like, as you navigate is a little bit lost because once you basically blur the extension, it doesn't stay up when you start navigating around to other things. So then you have to kinda launch it again every time. Not terrible, but also not the best experience.

I do think the side panel seems to be the best experience of the, for these kind of extensions, but we'll see where we take it. I'm trying not to get too hung up on the extension. I just wanna get something quick and out. That's why I have it out. There's more stuff I need to add to it.

There's little tweaks I wanna do to the styling and just like the general flow of the extension, but just gonna try to keep getting stuff out and updating the site so that way, I can kind of share more and more what OpenGraphs is gonna become. So I'm working on the landing pages for the browser extensions, which will include videos, which I'm gonna be recording and posting up onto those extension pages on the various, you know, add on web store places. And, yeah, so I'm feeling good about that. I'm feeling good about having those out. The thing I've been trying to basically, the thing that's been slowing me down a little bit is I'm just trying to really feel like, find the words to explain what exactly OpenGraphs is and just kinda showcase the problem.

The thing is OpenGraph images, you know, they kinda maybe are a little bit more of a vitamin. But I have a feeling as more and more things like with AI and and, you know, I guess, things getting consumed, it's gonna be, I think, more important to have these things be really kind of portable. And hopefully, the way that sites and links are being surfaced will rely more on this stuff. I mean, it already does on social media, but I don't know. I'm kind of I feel like I'm wrestling the resistance a little bit in my head.

I I find this the setup that I have to be really valuable and streamlined. I think others will too, but I just need to get it out onto paper and get it into the website and out for other people to basically learn about and evaluate whether it works for them. So trying really hard to basically capture all that and get it into a nice kind of punchy, you know, copy on the website. And so that way people understand exactly what it is and hopefully stir up some attention about it. I also posted a update to Indie Hackers.

I'm gonna try to share some updates there both because I think, you know, obviously, this is kind of a tool that appeals to people who are making stuff. And if you can make stuff and offer tools that allow people to make stuff faster, that is that's good. That's one just getting the rhythm of sharing stuff, both just on social media, but also in those kind of communities in areas where updates are kinda meant to be shared. I've also kinda I've been slowly dipping a toe into Reddit, which I never really have in the past. And so trying to figure out that space and just kinda getting a read on how people are sharing, what kind of interactions people are getting.

Because the thing that's gonna make or break this thing is really, I think, just awareness and distribution. And and, basically, you know, don't think from, like, a technical standpoint, I'm gonna run into any issues. It's really just more of, can I communicate the values that that it adds? Is it gonna be properly priced? And do I have enough awareness and traffic and demand to basically justify me continuing to work on it?

So we're gonna find all that stuff out, but I'm just gonna keep putting stuff out there and see how it goes. So I'll include the links to the extensions in the show notes. I'll also have a link to the indie hack indie hackers post. So if you wanna go over there, check it out. I'm gonna be making another update over on indie hackers as I kinda continue to flesh out the extensions and try to, you know, get some more users using those things.

Gonna have some updates coming out to the site shortly, which, won't be in the show notes, but will be in the next episode that I launch. But, yeah. So that's the update with opengrass.com. Check it out at opengrass.com. Sign up for the newsletter.

I'm gonna start sending out updates as these things are going live and continue to flesh out the site while I flesh out the the apps. Well, the app and, well, apps maybe. I did end up submitting for a Webflow developer partner account, and that was also approved too. So gonna be digging into some of these different services where you can kinda hook in to the actual, apps and make it to where it's really easy to integrate OpenGraphs wherever you are. So that might be a little bit, I don't know, ambiguous as far as, like, what the plan is there, but I think you got it.

So yeah. For more episodes, check out allplay.fm. Once again, I'm Ryan Hefner, and gonna be sharing some updates as I build stuff. Alright. I'll play you out.

Alright. Have a great one. Later.