Google begins launch of Chrome Extensions

A message on the Chromium Blog indicates that Google are beginning the process of rolling out extensions for Google Chrome. Although Chrome and Chromium are regarded as good browsers, critics have pointed to the lack of Firefox style Add-ons as a reason for it not being adopted more widely. Google have been working on implementing extensions and have now moved to turn on the extensions system in the Dev channel builds of Chrome and Chromium.

Chrome Extensions will allow developers to write add ons for Chrome that can add tool strips and buttons to the Chrome user interface, or manipulate page content on the users behalf. A page of sample extensions includes a GMail checker, Feed Reader subscriber and an extension which tells developers the state of the Chromium build system.

According to Boodman, the Google engineer who posted the announcement the "switching on" of the extensions API is, "the first step in our launch process"; a process that in future will see the feature arriving in beta and then in stable builds. In conjunction with the "switching on", Google have updated the documentation for Chrome Extensions, but remind the earliest adopters of Extensions of changes made to the APIs.

(djwm)