Extensions at Google I/O
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Today I gave a presentation at Google I/O explaining some of the cool ideas that lie at the heart of our upcoming extension system. For those who didn't get a chance to attend the conference, you can check out the slides, below:
The actions menu, visible in full-screen mode, will let you show speaker notes. We'll also post a video of the talk as soon as it's available.
As some of you know, it's already possible to write extensions using the latest developer build of Google Chrome. You can find out more about the system, and learn how to write your first extension, by reading our HOWTO document. We've really focused on making extensions as easy as possible to write, so you'll be up and running in no time.
We're still pretty early in the development of the extensions system, and we're constantly adding new features and tweaking the APIs based on your feedback. So if you try it out, we'd love to hear from you at chromium-discuss@chromium.org.
Happy coding!
Update: Video of this talk is now available, as are videos of a number of other Google Chrome-related talks.
34 comments:
Benni Bennetsen said...
thanks, thought diashow is pretty boring :)
Some of the stuff is really nice, like you don't have to restart after install/update of extensions :D
BUT when can we expect so see the extension system in work for real? Are we talking two month, 1 year or.. ?
May 27, 2009 1:06 PM
Jérôme Flipo said...
What does "Each browser window gets its own set of widgets" means? Would you be able do develop a set of add-ons that appear only for specific websites (for instance, display ten add-ons specific to Google Docs when I open docs.google.com in a tab)?
May 27, 2009 2:10 PM
boots said...
@Benni: Can't say for sure, it's always hard to estimate. But things are starting to come together in the dev channel so you can get a feel for how far away we are by looking there.
@Jérôme: It relates to the fact that in Chrome, each piece of UI in an extension is a normal web page. So if you have a toolbar, and you open two browser windows, you have two web pages. As for showing UI when a certain URL is being rendered in a tab, yes it is possible. Check out the HOWTO for more info.
May 27, 2009 2:26 PM
google said...
So where's my XUL to chrome extension auto translator?
May 27, 2009 2:39 PM
Ben said...
can't wait to try Chrome. Hoping that the mac or linux version gets released soon.
May 27, 2009 7:28 PM
MK said...
Looking good :)
Besides the toolstrip, is it possible to modify other toolbars, e.g. adding a Stop button to the main toolbar? Or will that have to wait for Issue 1656? I've always hated where Stop is currently situated.
May 27, 2009 7:56 PM
Ravi shankar said...
thanks,
happy to here that i dont need to restart after updating
it will be really cool if the theme is changed offcially
May 27, 2009 9:36 PM
Mohamed Mansour said...
Nice presentation boots!
@Ravi, theming is possible with chromium :) The progress has quite improved!
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list?can=1&q=label:Themes
I could now theme many areas in chromium, glen is an awesome job. And with extensions, you can change a theme instantly, without restarts.
May 27, 2009 9:52 PM
Beth said...
Nice presentation.
Beth - iflorist.co.uk
May 28, 2009 1:35 AM
tahpot said...
Slide 16: "One process for each extension"
Slide 18: "They're (extendsions) all in the same process, on the same thread."
So.. which is it?
May 28, 2009 3:01 AM
Alex said...
Looks very promising.
can haz "apt-get install google-chrome" nao?
May 28, 2009 3:02 AM
Juanlu_001 said...
Sounds very, very well! :D
May 28, 2009 4:21 AM
Boundlessdreamz said...
@ben: Mac and Linux Pre-Alpha builds are already available. You can read about google chrome on mac on techsutraand about the linux version on ars
May 28, 2009 10:44 AM
Aaron Boodman said...
@tahpot: the sentence "They're all in the same process, on the same thread" refers to the web pages inside a single extension, not to extensions as a group.
Each extension is in its own process. Within an extension, there are multiple pages. These pages can all talk to each other with direct JS function calls because they are on the same thread.
May 28, 2009 11:24 AM
Tom said...
So Google will host the extensions and screen them?
Will an adblock extension that blocks all google ads be allowed? (is the question you probably won't answer ;)
May 28, 2009 11:44 AM
Erez Sh said...
Awesome design! Finally someone is doing stuff properly.
Here's to 90% market-share in two years :)
May 28, 2009 11:45 AM
Anakin said...
Don't know where to go and i can't read any thing in the menues anymore.
I don't know how to reprt bugs so i need someone to do it
Font size is too small to read and i can't use chrome
The text on the labels of the tabs is in the same small font size as in the menues.
You guys have to fix it NOW or ASAP
Crome is totaly useless as it is now in 3.0.182.2 ? (can't read it)
Everything in Chrome font size from bookmarks to setings is totale screwed up.
May 28, 2009 2:09 PM
capitanqueso said...
Please could you add a feature "opera like" like "Insert personal", "Insert note" I use it a lot login-in on sites and forums also when need to paste my e-mail address and that.
May 28, 2009 4:31 PM
Jon said...
@aaron
How would I create a UI extension like Firebug, where the UI was a large side/bottom bar that could be resized?
May 28, 2009 5:32 PM
Saravan said...
Aaron,
Is the new extension is available in all platforms(mac, linux) or windows only ?
May 28, 2009 9:07 PM
Aaron Boodman said...
@Jon: We don't have support for side or bottom bars yet, though that is something that we want to add. If you wanted to do something like Firebug right now, you could display the UI in a separate popup window.
@Saravan: Extensions support on mac and linux is a little behind windows right now, but the idea is to support the same extensions on all platforms when we launch.
May 29, 2009 3:30 AM
bernz said...
Chrome is available on Linux as Chromium; it wasn't working for me a few months ago, but I recently tested it on Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04) and now it's doing pretty well.
May 29, 2009 9:04 AM
GluttonousInfant said...
Here's an idea... in keeping with the whole "extension as webpage" ideal... why not let all my myriad extensions live on the Google Chrome start page? An un-closeable tab that starts when you open the browser?
May 29, 2009 11:00 PM
Nactive said...
Looks nice, finally we got extensions !
May 30, 2009 1:38 PM
Benjamin Thomas said...
Have you considered teaming up with the JetPack team to come up with a standard format for how extensions work? Imagine being able to write one extension for both Firefox and Chrome.
As far as I can tell it seems like both projects have similar goals.
JetPack link: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/jetpack-faq/
May 31, 2009 1:15 AM
Prerna said...
very exciting stuff...thanks
Sachin
June 1, 2009 1:59 AM
Thomas said...
This looks extremely cool, I'm looking forward to the video from the session @ Google I/O in order to get more information about the design structure of the extensions part of Google Chrome.
Any information on when the video from the session will be able to access from the web?
June 3, 2009 2:57 AM
Thomas said...
Further more, is it possible to trackback to this post and if so, what is the trackback url for this post?
June 3, 2009 3:16 AM
boots said...
@Thomas, I don't know exactly when but the videos should be arriving soon.
As for the trackback URL, the permalink for this post is http://blog.chromium.org/2009/05/extensions-at-google-io.html. Is that what you're asking about? It appears that we don't have trackbacks enabled though in the blog's UI. I'll ask about turning them on.
June 3, 2009 9:26 AM
BW said...
I'm the type who likes to edit their installed extensions. I don't like waiting for the author to get around to fixing their extension. I like to fix it myself and submit a patch. I'd love to use a browser that is faster than FF but if this architecture is going to force me into being a consumer instead of a participator i'm just not going to switch.
June 3, 2009 12:03 PM
boots said...
@BW: Why would this architecture prevent you from editing extensions. They're just HTML. Edit all you want.
June 3, 2009 12:24 PM
tom said...
I'm wondering if these Chrome extensions have similar functionality/power to these in Firefox - for example AdBlock for FF completely prevents the ads from loading and I'm not sure if this is possible with AdSweep for Chrome (www.adsweep.org).
June 3, 2009 2:30 PM
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