Version 5.0 of the extension is now out, and it brings some big changes.

Design

100 Million Books wasn’t ever a bad-looking extension, in my opinion. It was even featured in web design newsletter Smashing Magazine early on for its clean aesthetic.

But the design was a result of a scrappy start and many adaptations over time, so things got messy over time. So messy that implementing a dark mode with the existing design was harder than burning it all down and starting from scratch.

So that’s what I did.

The result is even cleaner, I think, with all information now visible at a glance—tags used to only be displayed after a click, but that isn’t necessary any more. Book descriptions were removed too. Tags remain, and anyone looking to get more information can visit any of the links.

Before

After

Dark Mode

Fixing the base design paved the way for a dark mode to be created.

Speed

While revamping the design, I figured I might as well revamp the technical design as well.

Until now, all clients (extensions, desktop, mobile, and web) have fetched book data from a server and cached it locally to minimize loading time. This works well for text but not for images, as images were still loaded on-the-fly.

This new release of the extension packages all data (including images) in the extension itself, so there’s never any loading time required for anything (!). This also enabled the new tab countdown timer to be removed since there’s no longer any concern of overloading a server.

Not only does this make each tab load blindingly quick, but it improves user privacy since there’s no need to request data from a server…ever. Unless you’re signing up for the email list.

Future Updates

The desktop application, Whispers, will soon be retired.