The Future of TWP on Chrome and Edge

[FilipePS]

Body

The extension currently uses Manifest V2, and this year the extension should stop working on Chrome and maybe Edge.
I plan to update the extension to Manifest V3 and officially release it in the Chrome and Edge extension store.
Along with the update to Manifest V3 I plan to refactor the entire extension.

For anyone reading this, please answer the questions that apply to you.

For any user:

1. What does TWP have that makes you use it instead of the native translator or other extensions?
   • What do you like about it?
   • What features are missing?
2. User Interface:
   • Do you like the current interface?
   • Are some small fixes/improvements enough or does the interface need to be redesigned?
   • What should change?
3. Usage Preferences:
   • What are the options you use the most in TWP?
   • What is your favorite translation service?
   • Do you prefer to use the simple popup interface or the complex one?

For developers:

4. Javascript with JSDoc or Typescript? Why?
5. Which design patterns to use? Why? (i.e. MVP, module pattern, etc...).
6. Should I use a framework? Which one and why?
7. Repository Management:
   • Should the current repository on Github be archived and a new one created or should the current repository be used?
   • Consider that the file and folder structure will probably change completely.
   • Maybe I should create a new Branch (Main) in this repository and keep Master intact?

What did you just do?

• I wrote an objective issue, easy to understand.

[hypersw]

For me, with TWP success rate is higher, i.e. it is able to translate more dynamically appearing text than browser's own solutions (e.g. Edge). Sometimes a piece of new text remains untranslated, would be nice to be able to poke it somehow. As for FF built-in translation, it's just so dumb that it even asks to choose the language manually every time.

The biggest downside is that it can't handle PDFs, those which are displayed inside the browser. (browser itself can't either) Context menu to translate selected text is there, but that's on a different level. There are some, kind of, solutions offered by TWP, but they are either not working or are as "smooth" as uploading the file manually to Google Translate. And I hit PDFs in another language a lot.

Also it cannot handle Flutter Canvas UI, but that's kind of expected I think :)

On mobile, I hate the popup UI. It either sits there and blocks site's own menu, or hides and you can't get it when you need it :) Luckily, I don't do it so much on the phone. On PC, I use FF on Win and Linux, and mostly only use Ctrl+Alt+T to flip the mode, other than that everything happens automatically, and feels really good.

[hypersw]

With the repo, code-wise one would typically branch the old code into a named "release" branch and refactor everything in master to shape the new version. I suppose in this case the issues could be the defining criterion: if there are a lot of meaningful open and closed issues on the old version, and the new version has nothing to do with the old codebase and its issues, it might be worth starting from scratch in the new repo. The code won't stand in the way, but the issues might make a mess.

[rifterzc]

I haven't been using it as regularly, it usually meets all my translation needs in Firefox. I use it because Firefox lacks the whole page translation in the languages I need

The current interface is good enough for my uses.

I mostly just use highlight to translate and occasionally full page translate, and I don't have any real issues

[pauljacobson]

I don't use Chrome so I'm not using Google Translate in my browsers. I also find that TWP gives me better translations more consistently. I'm happy with the UI the extension uses. I usually trigger a translation using a keyboard trigger and that works well for me.