4 New Google Chrome Extensions

by: Brian on: May 30th, 2009

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I am still juggling between Chrome and Firefox because I have come to depend on a large number of Firefox plug-ins over the years. The day Google Chrome supports all the extensions I use with Firefox I can see myself switch to Chrome completely. Chrome still doesn’t “officially” support extensions. Userscripts and greasemonkey scripts are used to support custom options for the time being. However recent developers builds have alpha extension support built-in to the browser. You will have to download developers builds in order to install these extensions.

-> To Enable extensions on developers build right click chrome shortcut > properties and on the “target” field add “- -enable-extensions” after “chrome.exe”. There should be a space in between. You will need to restart Chrome.

-> To Install extensions go to the extension developer website and click on the download link and it will prompt you to install extension.

-> To Uninstall extensions, on your chrome browser visit this link: “chrome://extensions/” and it will list all the extensions currently installed and you can choose to uninstall from there.

1) Cleeki: An extension that mimics the way Accelerators work with IE8. Basically once you highlight a text it prompts a small hovering button and from there you can choose to execute actions like “searches”, “Google maps”, “translations” etc. Perhaps important for IE8 users, Cleeki can import IE8 accelerators to Google Chrome.

2) Adsweep: This is a useful ad blocker that does a very good job of blocking ads, but not very extensive in options like adblock plus for Firefox yet.

3) Page Rank for Chrome: This is a nice little extension that does pagerank checks on website you visit. Its actually faster and better than the Firefox plug-in I currently use, which doesn’t support checking pagerank for individual pages. Only checks for domain.

4) CustomNewTab: A useful plugin that changes the way a new tab functions by customizing the dashboard. This can be useful since currently when you open a new tab in chrome instead of visiting your homepage (like Google or yahoo) it shows the most visited websites in panels (among other things), with Customnewtab extension you can configure Chrome to redirect new tab to your “home page” or change the way it currently looks. Installing the plugin and editing the preference is easy enough but when it comes to applying the configuration you have to manually edit config.xml and insert the XML code, which can be a turn off for some users. Hopefully this will change in the future or even better Chrome will have this function built-in.

The Google Chrome extension framework itself is in early stage of development and there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. As it becomes more stable and matures we will see many more creative and useful chrome extensions coming out. If you know of any interesting Google Chrome native extensions (not scripts) feel free to share it with us.

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Comments:

John
05/30/2009

Awesome!

Two plug-ins I was looking for are already available on Chrome now someone needs to port firebug as a Chrome extension and I can say goodbye to Firefox. I don’t really like the developers tool that comes with Chrome, Firebug + yslow is currently used to do majority of my design related work so i can’t wait for it to be available under Chrome.

Thanks!
seecee
05/30/2009

I can see chrome being a major browser in the next 2 years by taking in about 20% market. Of course this is just wild guestimation, but honestly its nice to see a company making extremely well done products and people are going nuts over the quality of the products and using it because its superior not because Microsoft is shoving it down people’s throat.

I predict IE will die horrible death in 2 years time. :)
shelly
05/31/2009

the same goes here. I’m thrilled about the Chrome speed however I need a slightly different New tab extension (my favo one is from http://www.newtabking.com)
–shelly
blackknight
05/31/2009

AdSweep has been around for some time. They ported it to a Chrome extension in March when the very first version of Chrome in the dev-channel supported extensions.
Dave Ward
05/31/2009

Its actually faster and better than the Firefox plug-in I currently use, which doesn’t support checking pagerank for individual pages.

For a better Firefox PageRank plugin, check out SearchStatus.
subcorpus
05/31/2009

slightly off topic … but is there a way i can keep my tabs on the right side of the screeen in chrome … ???
thanks …
jason
05/31/2009

I’m already a Chrome convert. Simple and easy to use. I find it better for managing multiple browser sessions at one time.
service guy
05/31/2009

Its simple and i have started using it.

thank u
ded
06/01/2009

I know I’ll switch to chrome as soon as it supports those last few things I can’t live without from my firefox extensions. but I’ll wait and see what improvements firefox makes to compete with chrome.
Television Spy
06/01/2009

Good list, but not exhaustive just yet.
Into Windows
06/01/2009

Finally, we have some extensions for cute Chrome.
LeRoy
06/01/2009

Will certainly be glad when I can use it with Ubuntu……
NO MATTER the extensions!!
Mark Malewski
06/07/2009

I like Chrome, but it needs a good Tab Manager that will save sessions, and restore sessions (remember which tabs were open, remember which windows were open, etc.) exactly like the “Tab Mix Plus” Add-on for Firefox.

Tab Mix Plus is incredible, and it’s such a useful feature. I want to switch to Chrome, but I just can’t live without “Tab Mix Plus”. Is there any way to use FireFox Add-ons with Google Chrome?

Is there any way to use Tab Mix Plus with Google Chrome? If that were possible, I know myself and all the admins in my shop would switch to Chrome in a heartbeat. But everyone I talk to is just so used to having an excellent tab Manager like Tab Mix Plus (that records sessions, and saves current sessions, so they can be opened at a later time, and you can even switch between sessions, click on a session from a week ago, and then revert back to the session for today). It makes switching between open windows and open tabs so much easier for different tasks, plus if you need to shut down your browser or computer, when you restart (or reopen) Firefox, it reloads your last session, and re-opens all your existing windows and tabs.

I just wish Tab Mix Plus existed for Chrome, and we’d all switch in a heartbeat! I love Chrome’s speed, and love that Chrome doesn’t crash the whole browser when a plugin like Flash crashes (like Firefox just causes the whole browser to crash). So I love the stability and speed of Chrome, but I still need a good Tabs Manager like “Tabs Mix Plus” for Google Chrome. Now that’s the only reason we haven’t switched to Chrome yet.
Mark Malewski
06/07/2009

This is the “Tabs Mix Plus” addon that I was talking about, it’s excellent! Allows you to rename tabs, it also keeps tabs as a red italics (if you haven’t clicked on the tab yet) and then changes it to black text (if you’ve used the tab) so you can see new tabs quickly. The single greatest feature by far is the ability to save open tab sessions. If you just click on the “close” button and shut down Firefox, when you restart Firefox, it will give you a menu with your last 10 saved sessions, and you can select which session you want to restore! It’s such an awesome feature, so you can shut your browser down (if you have maybe 12 or 13 windows open, and 30 tabs open) and it will automatically remember (and restore your open windows and open tabs) the next time you start the browser!

Also the session manager makes it so easy to switch between sessions. We really need something like this for Chrome!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1122
Josh
07/22/2009

Hi,

Just created a simple extension to view XML files in a userfriendly format – with opening and closing nodes.

You can download it from http://files.getdropbox.com/u/598146/xmltree.crx

Looking forward to getting some feedback.

Josh
daya
07/24/2009

F***k Chrome …..
Love Fire fox………………………..
Verily
12/19/2009

Again, are you sure you’re a geek? or do you merely aspire to be one?

flash is a firefox plug-in
NoScript is a firefox extension

plug-ins are NOT extensions — and visa versa

While those are nice… chrome, a fork of chromium, is not an acceptable option still without a sane adblocking option. Iron, developed by SRware, however, also a fork of chromium, has a native adBLOCK solution

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

adsweep does not BLOCK anything:
http://himself.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/adsweep-the-other-adblock-for-chrome-yet-another-reminder-to-download-adblocking-technology-missing-from-googe-browser/
Bob
12/28/2009

I’d like to mention a Chrome extension I wrote that enables users to write comments about a site at the site. What this means is that any visitor to the site who has the extension installed is informed that there are comments available. This, I believe, is an excellent way to get a company’s attention, especially if customer support is lacking (let’s face it: although users should rave about great service, they tend only to rant when service is poor). Download it today from https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/afeoipghnipcpkgbeagnlkhhibkcghmh
AC Walker
01/02/2009

I agree that TabMix Plus is useful, but if you go to the forum on the developer’s site, it’s very clear that he has some sort of mad-on for Google, the company (maybe he couldn’t get hired there?) and is adamant that he is never going to make a Chrome port for the extension. The best bet is hoping someone else does something similar to capture the functionality. TooManyTabs doesn’t have nearly as many functions, but it’s a pretty good start.
reber
02/18/2010

The installation of Chrome is extremely simple. Just with any browser, go to Google Chrome. If you have already installed a previous version of Chrome, know that the software updates itself automatically … and silent. So it is not clear whether or not the version you have is good.. For further details check out on http://www.techarena.in/guide/29736-google-chrome-4-complete-guide.htm.

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