Google Chrome Extensions
With the Beta release of Chrome, many people are looking to download Google Chrome Extensions and we have had several people email today wanting to know “Where are the Chrome Extensions or Addons”, but as you can see by the list on the right there are none and unfortunately they don’t currently exist.
Chrome does have Plug-Ins which includes programs such as Java from Sun Microsystems, Flash from Adobe and Silverlight from Microsoft however these are slightly different technology than Extensions which add new features and functionality. Many people rely on extensions such as Firebug, Greasemonkey, AdBlock Plus, NoScript and others which is preventing users from switching to Chrome as their default browser. Google is aware of this and does plan on adding Extension abilities and an API to enable developers to create new functionality for Chrome.
The initial Beta release of Google Chrome is more of a “Core Browser” release to focus on bugs and to get the base product functioning flawlessly before starting to extend functionality.
Development and the release of an API is high on the priority list for Chrome.
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Since you can use both Google bookmarks and delicious ‘bookmarklets’ (available at ‘del.icio.us/help/buttons’ and at the Google bookmarks site/help bookmarks from within Chrome) by dragging them to the ‘Chrome bookmarks bar’ maybe this should be more widely publicized since this is one thing everyone is complaining about apart from adblock which you can solve somewhat with privoxy or the mvps.org hosts file.
Another great tip I discovered online. You can disable javascript by launching chrome with the ‘-disable-javascript’ parameter like this.
“C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome” -disable-javascript
(the path will be different for Vista)
A few others too:
-disable-images
-disable-java
-disable-plugins
-disable-popup-blocking
-start-maximized
I have switched to Chrome from IE8(beta) I’ve never relied on Plugin’s seeing as how most of how I like to browse (reusing same tabs for links etc) is native to IE, but I miss one thing:
Stumbleupon!
Give me my tool bar google please, I love finding sites I would otherwise have missed at the click of a button…
Hi, do you know when extensions will be implemented?
I downloaded Google Chrome and I love it! I however miss the Google toolbar. Do you know when that will be in the product?
I really like the Gmail Manager from one of the Firefox extensions and I hope Google Chrome would implement it as one of the extensions in the future. Makes mail checking way more convenient.
Im with Chris, I want my stumbleupon! Thats the only problem I have.
Except Delicious, thanks for the help on that one! ( to the poster some-
where above me) Im willing to wait patiently on everything else, except, I cant add any applications to my Facebook page . So, I have to open my IE, to do these things. Which has miraculously became even slower now.
hehe, looks like some fatal error - not to include what people need the most
speed is great, navigation is awesome.
Two more useful bookmarklets you can use with Chrome:
Google notebook - http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/bookmarklet.html
Google Reader - Bookmarklet for RSS subscribe (Go to settings/goodies) - http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page
Browsing is horrible without AdBlock Plus. No matter how good the browser is.
It’s only beta, but if the Chrome devs were smart they would put in addon capabilities too in order to get it tested properly.
Addons should be considered a fundamental part of any next-gen browser and not something that’s “added later on”.
@project6, you could try using Privoxy or a hosts file based adblocker like the ‘mvps.org’ host file. Some folks are using privoxy and are quite happy so far - http://www.fritscher.ch/blog/2008/09/03/google-chrome-adblock-with-privoxy/
Both work quite well but since even with Firefox I used the mvps host file and not adblock I don’t know how far they can be a replacement.
It’s great, but currently for the purist and minimalist. I come to Chrome from Avant Browser/Orca, which does pretty much everything I want a browser to do, especially customizable URL and search aliases. Really speeds up work. If I type in “m”, up comes my webmail. If I type “i bald eagle” I get large-format-only JPEGs of bald eagles. With its stability and speed, I’d be more inclined to use Chrome if it offered the superb functionality offered by Avant and Orca.
you might want to double check about Silverlight. I don’t know if it only works here and there, but I do know that it doesn’t work with MLB.tv, which live streams baseball games….
remember, this a beta, not the finished product! i want my plugins too, firefox changed the way i browsed, but i recognize Google ‘choice’. its a beta, so its intended to weed out the bugs, shortcomings and such. if it were a finished product, we would have to wait for the next version to launch before anything gets resolved. this way, Chrome beta to final version is THE top priority. its quicker this way
The rich set of pulgins is part of waht makes Firefox so popular.
That there were NONE released initially shows a lack of foresight by Google.
Flash block, AdBlock, and tab controls either should have been default options or the plugins should have been released with Chrome. User acceptance and testing (yes, its still beta) whould have been much higher.
As it is now Chrome is not really usable at all.
I come form Firefox and am badly missing Russian transliteration plugins - when you can type Cyrillic characters using Latin keyboard. I often have to send emails or fill up the forms in Russian - and Firefox transliteration plugins are indispensable. I guess that other people who have to type in foreign languages, may share my concern. Otherwise, Chrome is excellent, especially its speed. If Chrome would provide transliteration support , I would switch to it without second thought.
AdBlock for me was the single most important reason to turn Chrome down immediately. Once it’s available I may reconsider. Anyhow AdBlock is 100% against Google’s business model so I’m not expecting having AdBlock to be that straightforward.
I also felt the browser was very slow in switching tabs. That’s something I do a lot and that behavior annoyed me a lot. Otherwise nice fresh approach. I hope Firefox guys can integrate the technology into their browser.
Personally I prefer NOT using a browser from Google. One company having total control of from services to browser is too much control for a single entity. It’s structurally a very bad thing. Companies are not good or bad, they are all greed.
it’s fast, faster than any other (even switching tabs). for me that’s enough of a reason to use it despite giving google more power over my browsing experience. I’ll assume they mean well until proven otherwise.
The only thing right now that I really miss are my delicious bookmarks.
What I really miss is the Master password that Firefox has. Because now, when I choose to let Chrome to save login for a web page, then anyone can just open the Chrome browser menu, and select “show passwords”! That is not so good, this really prevents me from using this “save login” feature.
On the positive site, Chrome is very fast and stable, but maybe the reason for that is, that Chrome has only a limited set of features?
And also we need video recording plug-ins.
@Jon Stackpool
You can indeed make shortcuts to launch any website. Simply go
[Wrench] -> Options -> Manage (Default search:) -> Add
Then simply type in a name, a keyword, and a web address. That will work exactly the same. It can also be used to add searches (the reason for the functionality).
I like everything about Chrome, but I cannot use it presently as my online banking requires Active-X and my corporate email portal requires Java. Neither works with Chrome.
Meanwhile, I simply cannot afford to use Chrome.
“That there were NONE released initially shows a lack of foresight by Google.”
What is shows is that people don’t understand what a beta or or a 0.2 “release” are. These are development/testing releases, the API for the core and the renderer aren’t even complete/stable yet.
What else it shows is that Google has plenty of foresight, a firm grasp on prioritisation, and a sane development model: Work out the core first, make it sure it works as expected, make sure the multi-process model works as it should and doesn’t leak memory, optimize v8, and iron out the bugs and rendering glitches. When the core is ready, meaning the basic functionality is present, and the core API is in a stable state (stable here meaning it, largely, isn’t changing anymore), then build an extension API on top of that.
Building an extension API on top of unstable core APIs means they not only have to rewrite the extension API every time they commit a change to the core API, third party extension developers have to then rewrite their extensions with every change to the API. Which in turn translates to a headache for users, which is a headache for everyone.
In short, understand that Chrome is in a very, very early beta state, and extension will be availible, in rudimentary form eventually (pre-1.0, I suspect), and will deffinatly be in the 1.0 release. People just really shouldn’t be using pre-1.0 software with the expectation of having a 1-.0 quality experience. It’s more for preview/bugfixing/development purposes right now. If you want a browser fit for everyday use, then quite frankly, you should be using one that is at that stage of development.
Google doesn’t want Chrome to end up like the mess Firefox is, where is has all the fancy extensions, but hasn’t quite nailed the core functionality, especially, in the case of Firefox, memory management (specifically, the memory leak that has been around since Firebird 0.7, which still hasn’t been entirely worked out, which, if memory serves, was before there was even an extension API.).
Hats off to chrome.. really awesome.. been using it since da day it released n its already improving.. although i wud love if i cud pause n resume my downloads.. funny how da coders missed dat :D. i m gonna learn n modify da source code soon…
Need a lot of tweak, plug-ins and add-ons are the main issue here, but looking good for a beta.
Amaizing browser speed.
Hey guys, does anyone know when Google will at least update it’s Beta to include the current extensions so that we don’t have to download everything one by one to finish just in time to update and write over our work?
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Hey Everybody! Does anyone know the keyboard shortcut to open the ‘wrench’? Thanks!
I am sorry to have asked the above question on this thread… It just struck me that this question does not belong here. Thanks!
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