Chrome extension dialog doesn't appear when packaged for store

Question

I have a chrome extension (.crx) that when I install it directly everything works fine, but doesn't when I try to load it in developer mode with the manifest.json I created.

I no longer have access to the developer who wrote this extension for me, so I tried to package it for the Chrome store myself.

To explain in more detail. The usecase where my chrome extension works:

1. I open the extensions area in Chrome
2. I drag and drop the .crx file into my chrome extensions dashboard
3. My icon appears as expected in the toolbar
4. I click on the icon and the dialog box for my extension appears as expected

The usecase where my packaged chrome extension doesn't work (after uninstalling the .crx file):

1. I created a package, with the manifest.json described below incorporating the exact same .crx file used successfully above.
2. To test the package, I went to the extensions dashboard, made sure my "Developer Mode" checkbox was enabled, and selected the "Load Unpacked Extension".
3. No errors, and the icon loads just fine.
4. I click on the icon in the browser toolbar, nothing happens! No dialog appears even though it is the exact same .crx file.

Here's the manifest.json I created:

{
  "manifest_version": 2,
  "name": "Rock the Deadline Curation Extension",
  "version": "5.2",
  "description": "This extension allows you to bookmark and curate content into RTD Studios and share with other studio users.",
  "icons": {"128": "RTD-Square-Icon_128x128.png"},
  "browser_action": {
        "default_icon": { 
          "19": "discover-iconx19.png", 
          "38": "discover-iconx38.png"
        },
        "default_title": "RTD Studios"
   }
}

Any thoughts? Thanks so much in advance!

Answer 1

Reverse engineering an extension could be a complicated process, and I wouldn't recommend it if you don't need to. But a .crx file is a .zip file with some extra stuff at the beginning. This means that you may be able to unzip the file as if it were a .zip file, and ignore any error that comes up. I've not been able to do this with Windows right click "Extract All", but I have done this with the Mac OS X unzip command. Once you have the extracted folder, you can load the extension using your second step 2 above.