Setting up

In this project you're going to create a Safari extension, which lets us embed a version of our app directly inside Safari's action menu, then manipulate Safari data in interesting ways.

What do I mean by "interesting ways"? Well, our little Safari extension is going to read in the URL and page title that the user was visiting, then show them a large text area they can type JavaScript into. When the extension is dismissed, we'll execute that JavaScript in Safari.

This is the first of two projects that are hard. This is not because I want to torture you, but because this isn’t one of Apple’s better APIs – in fact, I’d say it’s downright ugly in places. In this project, the actual amount of code you're going to be writing is quite small. However, it's dense, and there's a lot to take in, so it might feel like slow going.

At the very least, the project will still be useful and you'll learn a lot too – not least about Safari extensions and a new class called NotificationCenter.

Let's get started: create a new Single View App project in Xcode, naming it Project19.