The past few months have been a wild ride getting smart-hebrew-rtl to a state I’m actually proud of, especially with the v2.2.0 release. This browser extension intelligently detects and reformats Hebrew text on web platforms, making it display correctly Right-to-Left (RTL) without breaking surrounding languages. The big push for v2.2.0 was all about achieving instant and flicker-free RTL rendering, especially for streaming content. It turned out to be a much bigger beast than I anticipated.

Here’s what I wrestled with to get v2.2.0 out the door:

  • The Flicker Nightmare: Achieving truly flicker-free RTL for streaming content was a beast. I tried everything from “sticky CSS” to native dir attributes, eventually landing on a “two-phase streaming RTL” approach. Each fix felt like a whack-a-mole game, solving one problem only to reveal another.
  • MutationObserver Pitfalls: A nasty bug caused input fields (like ChatGPT’s) to freeze. Turns out, observing characterData mutations was too aggressive. The fix? Completely removing that observer and implementing smarter filtering to skip all mutations from editable areas. Less observation, more stability!
  • Building My Own Tools: To really debug streaming issues, I built a diagnostic tool using Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP). This was invaluable for cross-platform testing, simulating rendering speeds, and inspecting DOM changes, especially for tricky platforms like Claude.ai.
  • Browser Extension Quirks: Ran into classic Chrome manifest rejections (non-numeric suffixes, _comment key warnings). Small things, but they add up during release prep.
  • The Polish Marathon: Beyond the code, there was a lot of polish: refining the Chrome Web Store description, updating the popup with feedback links and post-update notifications, and reorganizing the project structure.

Honestly, this period felt like a marathon. There were moments of pure frustration, staring at a flickering screen, but also immense satisfaction in slowly chipping away at complex rendering problems. It reinforced that sometimes you need to build your own tools to understand and solve a problem, and that persistence, even when you feel like you’re going in circles, eventually pays off. Shipping v2.2.0 feels like a huge weight off my shoulders.

Next: Monitor feedback and plan for minor bug fixes.