Google will block local extensions in Chrome 33 for Windows
thenextweb.com
thenextweb.com
The end result of this is that many of my non-technical family members end up with a hijacked Chrome experience. I've seen this only in the last year, increasingly so in the last few months.
This move to outlaw extensions not in the Chrome Store will halt this behavior.
Also, I doubt that you need an extension to change the homepage.
If your cabin in the woods is getting broken into, you won't secure it by putting a lock on the front door. You'll just get robbed and have a broken window.
The real problem is users accepting and running installers that install crapware. You effectively give it permission to do anything it wants.
I can only support such a move as long as there is still away to use them. If they completely ban external extensions, then I won't be supporting Chrome anymore, because I know it's only a matter of time before they ban Adblock then, or other apps they don't agree with.
Edit: I mean to say the development community hasn't explained the benefits or come up with interesting use-cases. Or at least not very loudly. ;)
Right now if I adjust a bunch of different elements, I have to remember each one and copy them by hand.
Edit a CSS file in the Sources tab of the Dev Tools then right click and click Local Modifications. Also right click on the file (in the whitespace) and click Save. Then click History and you can see the exact changes that you made and even revert.
I've never used it though, not sure how useful it is.
There is also a Workspace feature in the Dev Tools options which might have something closer to what you are looking for.
Do you really want things like an FTP, file manager, text editor, or other extensions installed? They could easily introduce security vulnerabilities and will slow down your browsing experience (something that you want to be fast).
I leave about 500 tabs open so more extensions are not something that I want to have locking up my browser.
Many browser extensions ask for permissions such as viewing all web history, no thanks...
500 tabs is probably an exaggeration, but unless I recently restarted my computer or Chrome so it will update I always have over 100 open.
Does anyone know of an open-source bookmark manager that can be self-hosted? The bookmarklet is easy to create and archiving a copy of the site would be a really nice feature (but not required). There are also several scripts to pull out summaries or body text from pages, but those could always be processed later.
I'd like to eventually import all the bookmarks into some kind of bookmark manager once I figure out the best way to handle it. The XML files that Chrome creates when you export them are a very nice storage format for processing later.
Now the feature set for a browser pretty much settled down, web apps are able to do powerful things on their own, and mobile apps stole the market of the "small app that does one specific thing good".
You could make the argument that the variety of use cases is limited: all of the above are fairly simple "click a button to save somewhere" apps, and they don't do too much fancy integration beyond laying an iframe with their save dialog onto the page.
Our own academic-focused extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/paperpile-extensio...) is a bit more niche, but does some cool stuff: we use the background page to parse metadata from PDFs, content scripts to insert buttons into academic search results (Buffer does something similar for Twitter), and it plugs into Google Docs to provide an extra layer of UI.
But alas, the most useful thing our extension does is similar to Evernote/Pocket/Buffer: save a piece of content (in this case journal articles) for later.
I think the problem with doing cool extension stuff is that it's often really hard to get just right: you need to tread carefully when working on a system that could interfere with your user's most basic browsing experience!
Google is just one step away from making me quit using Chrome. If they ban external extensions for good with a future Chrome release, that's it, I'm done. I'll start using either Firefox or Opera, and then convince everyone I know to use them, too, just like I did before with Chrome.
People who are willing to move to "Developer mode" will not be the people who will be confused in any way.
If you do the right thing for your users first, this is what you do. You put user needs over developer needs.
There is a middle ground between letting any malware on the machine install whatever extensions it wants with no user consent, and banning users from installing extensions entirely.
If I'm reading the article right, they'll also disable any extension that the user manually installed from a local .crx. I don't agree with this, just add a warning and allow it. To me, it feels like some sort of DRM.
It doesn't help that developers have to pay a $5 fee to publish extensions in the Chrome Web Store. It's small, but not everyone is willing to/can pay it.
In the (U.S.) political world, we have Democrats and Republicans both doing essentially the same thing in a different way, and demonize the other for taking some aspect of it "too far".
Maybe if we got used to having more than two choices, we wouldn't have to worry about this as much.
To develop extensions on Windows, I think you will have to switch to the dev or canary channel http://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel
Edit: changed “now” to “will be” for clarity. Thanks Navarr.
At the moment, there's a way for software to install Chrome extensions (not developer mode). They're removing this capability. You will probably still be able to run developer mode extensions
I'm Firefox all the way but let's not spread FUD.
Too many drive by installs try to happen without it.
It's not about not knowing how to switch to developer mode, it's about the fact that everywhere is putting up higher and higher walled gardens. Sure, it makes sense for most people, but it's not the direction I like to see the internet go in.