Chrome Extension: Amazon UK Search and Switch

JavaScript 1 Minute

I created a very simple Google Chrome extension that:

  • Allows you to search Amazon UK with a right-click
  • Switch back and forth between the UK and US versions of a page

Install it from the Chrome Extensions site.

The latter feature I find myself using all the time. If you follow, say, a book recommendation link to the .com site, but you want to buy  it on the .co.uk site. Alternatively, you may be reading a handful of reviews on the UK site, but over on the US site, there are lots more. When you’re on the Amazon.co.uk/.com site a “page action” icon will appear which, when clicked, will simply replace the amazon.co.uk in the URL with amazon.com or vice-versa.

It was incredibly simple to create. (It took longer to create the icons than write the code!) Extensions are essentially web pages that run in the background and have access to an API for interacting with Chrome: e.g. chrome.contextMenus, chrome.tabs, etc

For example: the search menu was created like so:

chrome.contextMenus.create({
    title: "Search Amazon.co.uk for '%s'",
    contexts:["selection"],
    onclick: function (info, tab) {
        var query = info.selectionText;
        chrome.tabs.create({
            selected: true,
            url: 'http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=' + encodeURIComponent(query)
        });
    }
});

To look at the rest of the source go to the install page, right click the Install button, save the CRX file and unzip it.

In future, I may add an options page so it’s not hard-coded for the UK/US sites and to selectively enable/disable the features.

Hope you find it as useful as I do.

Published by Duncan Smart

Published

10 thoughts on “Chrome Extension: Amazon UK Search and Switch”

  1. Excellent – haven’t installed it yet but I’m sure it will be great.
    I was searching for an extension to take me to the UK version of a US book page and this was one of the top hits.

    Thanks for your work on this… even if it wasn’t much work for you, I wouldn’t have known where to start!

    Reply

    1. Unfortunately it recently go pulled from the Chrome extensions site because I’d used Amazon’s logo. I haven’t got round to updating it yet…

      Reply

  2. Hello, could you email me a CRX file of the amazon extension to m.araszkiewicz [at] gmail dot com? this is what i was looking for but can’t find it on chrome webstore….

    Reply

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