I would like to add my humble opinion on this topic. Though both of my extensions (Cleeki and AniWeather) are surely affected, my opinion below is, instead, more from a viewpoint of a user.
The lesson I learned from my development experience, more importantly as a user, is to avoid making a hard-coded decision on behalf of a user, unless a user really doesn't know what he wants. When a group of users are pleased because of certain deterministic setting, there might be equal amount of users who are unhappy about it, considering statistically users are more likely to complain, instead of complimenting. Every user is unique, and the best way is to accommodate the demand from both sides. In all classic applications (Windows Explore, Internet Explorer, Firefox), there is an option to hide status bar and I don't know why this is a problem for Chrome. Getting rid of an option because some dislike it is like getting ride of the disabled permit parking because most drivers won't need it. Back to browser actions, only allowing one 19px image let the designed system immediately reach its upper capacity without any grace space for future expanding. IMHO allowing a popup page is like a clumsy patch because of this hard-coded architecture. That said, I am pretty sure that many users will like it because of its simplicity, but I am also confident that there are many users/developers feeling it is too restricted. Of course, the above is just my 2c and in no means I meant to alter any decision in Chrome dev because I am standing out of it. But I believe if Google Chrome is targeting at gaining some share from the severe browser battle, it might be a good idea to consider more from users. Best, Jack On Oct 12, 2:41 pm, Aaron Boodman <a...@chromium.org> wrote: > Hello all, > > As a few of you have noticed from changes in the bug system, we've decided > to replace toolstrips with a new extensions UI surface area: browser > actions<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/BrowserActions> > . > Here is what they look like: > > [image: browser_action.png] > > A browser action is a 19px image button that shows up in the main Chrome > toolbar to the right of the omnibox. They can be rendered from a static set > of images in your extension, or you can render them dynamically using the > HTML5 canvas. > > They can also optionally have a popup, which is implemented using HTML, > similar to how toolstrips worked. > > We will be disabling toolstrips before the beta release of Chrome 4, so we > encourage extension developers to start converting their extensions to use > browser actions soon. We'll be updating the docs in the coming weeks with > details. > Even though we are still in the dev channel of Chrome, where everything is > subject to change, we try to avoid ever breaking APIs. So we didn't come to > this decision lightly. The reason we did it that we got a lot of negative > feedback about the toolstrip shelf across the bottom of the browser. Many > users did not like the wasted space, particularly when only one extension > was installed. > > When we stepped back and thought about the use cases, we came to the > conclusion that most extensions don't really need to show complex UI in the > toolbar -- a single button with an expandable area is usually sufficient. > This also had the advantage of being a more prominent location and fitting > better with Chrome's sparse aesthetic. > > While we understand this change is frustrating and won't work perfectly for > every extension, we think it is for the best, and are excited to see what > you can do with it. > > If you want to get started even before we finish the docs, you can take a > look at our samples, which have already been converted: > > - > http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/test/data/exte... > - > http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/test/data/exte... > - > http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/test/data/exte... > - > http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/test/data/exte... > - > http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/chrome/test/data/exte... > > I'll post on this mailing list as the browser action API solidifies and the > documentation is completed. > > - a --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium-extensions" group. To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensions@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to chromium-extensions+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-extensions?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
