Gerald

Gerald is a duck who you can hire to manage your web browsing needs. He works for free as long as you promise to give him company.

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Inspiration 💡

We were inspired by Untitled Goose Game and ducks all across the world. We wanted to make an extension which built upon the features of leading web browsers in order to be more productive. That was when we noticed that traditional browsers were missing one thing: a duck named Gerald.

What it does 💻

Gerald is a chrome web extension that provides a simple and clean UI to replace the boring new tab screen that Chrome has to offer. Gerald allows you to list your tasks for the day, save your favorite web pages, search the web, tell the time, and check the weather. Gerald also provides inspirational quotes, if you ask him kindly.

How we built it ⚡️

This project was developed using Vue.js and Typescript with TailwindCSS. As well as IntelliJ IDEA and VS Code, our favourite IDEs that never presented any sort of issues whatsoever. We initially built off of one of Google’s extension templates, however we ended up expanding it extensively.

Challenges we ran into 👨‍💻

We had many issues with configuring the web extension to support the features we wanted. Chrome is very precise about loading external scripts and apis, and so including this functionality took several deep dives into the depths of the Chrome developer's documentation. We also had some problems configuring our IDEs to support the diverse combination of technologies which were all being used in unison.

Accomplishments that we're proud of ✨

Gerald.

What we learned 📚

We've learned a ton about Chrome Extensions, JavaScript, and querying APIs. In the future, creating a similar extension will be immensely easier, as we now have the configuration and workflow defined for web extension development.

What's next for Gerald 🦆

We would have liked to include integration with Google Calendar to present upcoming events and information right from the home page, which is definitely something we could expand to include in the future.

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