Google Chrome To Support Add-Ons

andreyf · on Sept 20, 2008

I'm worried about the way they plan to separate the tabs into "separate instances"... it seems to me as cross-domain user scripting could do wonders to advance the browsing experience. Imagine installing a user script which adds hooks to Hacker News and other user scripts which use those hooks on other sites.

As a simple example, you could add a "submit to HN" links all over the place (ones that work without having to leave whatever site you're on). Our collective imagination of what could be done with that far exceeds what I'm thinking of.

litewulf · on Sept 20, 2008

Wait what? How do tabs in different processes preclude cross-domain user scripting? You can already do that!

In addition if you use the task manager you'll notice that child tabs are within the same process as well.

andreyf · on Sept 20, 2008

Wait what? How do tabs in different processes preclude cross-domain user scripting?

Didn't express myself clearly, sorry - I meant to say that I hope their security policy will allow cross-domain scripting from within addons.

litewulf · on Sept 21, 2008

Ah okay fair enough. Its kind of early to say at this point, but yes, I would like cross-domain scripting too.

That and a pony.

unalone · on Sept 20, 2008

Yech. I think bookmarklets would do a far better job of that, and they'd offer less chance of browser compromise at that.

I would like them to do what Safari does: map the first 9 bookmarks to CMD-#, so they essentially become shortcuts rather than clickable links.

litewulf · on Sept 20, 2008

They use CMD-# for switching tabs. I think bookmarks are better because they're less likely to shift... but I guess its kind of handy if you always keep say gmail on your first tab.

unalone · on Sept 20, 2008

Yeah, I think that a simple "left and right" to switch would work better. It's odd, though, how no browser has a really easy "shift tabs over" shortcut.

litewulf · on Sept 21, 2008

(you do know about ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab right? Its pretty standard in tabbed windows apps, so I guess people just keep using it for consistencies sake.)

unalone · on Sept 21, 2008

On the Mac it's CMD-Shift-{ and CMD-Shift-}, which is more of a pain to use quickly.

litewulf · on Sept 23, 2008

So I asked a Mac user once where his delete key was... and he told me he preferred it as a key combo.

This story relates because I think Apple hates people who type. And it also used to hate people who moused too...

cookiecaper · on Sept 20, 2008

See Shareaholic for Firefox.

I am annoyed right now. I am sick of everyone acting like Chrome is a coup d'etat of existing browser powerbrokers ... because it isn't, at all.

We already knew they would eventually support add-ons and we've seen extensions like the one you've proposed for a long time. I'm sorry if my annoyance is misdirected, but I don't understand why I'm the only one who sees this. Chrome is cool and browser development has gotten extremely interesting the last few months (especially now with SquirrelFish Extreme), but it is not the defeat of everyone else and I am tired of everyone acting like it is.

Apologies for venting.

unalone · on Sept 20, 2008

I'll give my personal opinion on this: I don't care about Chrome's market share. I don't care about market share, period. I don't care that my browser of choice, Safari, is woefully underrepresented on the market. All I care about is how good my browser is. And the excitement I have about Chrome isn't that I think it'll dominate the market, but that I think it's a damn good web browser. Blows Firefox out of the water, blows WebKit out of the water. It's a joy to use. Them adding add-ons creates the one last thing that Chrome didn't have to offer me.