Hello everyone !

Here is my first Chrome Extension, CustomNewTab !

This little extension will allow you to customize Chrome's default new tab.

Features :

• Display/Hide the most visited speed dial.
• Display/Hide the quick searches boxes.
• Display/Hide the recent bookmarks box.
• Display/Hide the recently closed tabs box.
• Use a whole other page instead of the default new tab.
• Insert another page as a frame inside your New Tab page.

Here is a screen shot of that last feature

Installation information :

Since extensions are still working only with Chrome 2.0+, you will need use the latest dev version of Chrome.
To change channel, see here.

Then, you need to download CustomNewTab.zip and extract it to any folder you like. Let's say C:\ChromeExtension.

Create a shortcut to chrome.exe.
Right click on that shortcut, go to properties.
Under "target", make sure you have

"YOUR_CHROME_EXE_PATH" --enable-extensions --load-extension="C:\ChromeExtension"

Of course, replace "C:\ChromeExtension" with the folder where you extracted the manifest.json and the custom_new_tab.js.

You can verify if everything is correctly installed by restarting Chrome.. then,
navigate to chrome-ui://extensions/ (simply paste it in your address bar) and you should see CustomNewTab there.

Now for the fun part !

Customizing your New Tab :

Right now, if everything is working as planned, your plugin is installed.. but your new tab will still be the same !
That is simply because you haven't customized it yet.

To do this, you need to go to your "C:\ChromeExtension" folder (or any other folder where you extracted the extension) and open with any text editor "custom_new_tab.js".

In there, there is a section with different variables which you can change.
More detailed instructions are offered inside the file.

Let's say you want to remove the Most Visited section of the new tab and use http://www.google.com inside a frame in your new tab.

You simply have to follow these (very) simple steps :

1. find the "HIDE_MOST_VISITED" option.
2. Modify it's value from false to true.
3. Find the "DISPLAY_ANOTHER_PAGE_INSTEAD" variable.
4. Modify it's value from 0 to 2.
5. Find the "PAGE_TO_DISPLAY_URL" variable.
6. Change it's value to "http://www.google.com/".
7. Save.
8. Open a new tab ! (no need to restart Chrome)

If you have any question or would like to see some new features, feel free to request them here or send me an email at " GuiSim@Gmail.com ".

Also, if there are any bugs, please tell me and I will do my best to fix them !

The code is released under GPL.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Thanks / Comments / Flames appreciated !

EDIT : Also, this extension could easily be a user script. If someone feels like doing a little conversion, feel free to do so.
I might do it myself if someone asks.

EDIT 2 : Version 0.3 -> Modified the option variables.