The Last Days of Desktop: Chrome Welcomes Third Party Extensions
Google Chrome has begun taking submissions from third party developers. In a blog post written earlier today, Google is asking developers to contribute to the Chrome extensions gallery - an act that will put third party applications on both the Chrome browser and eventually the operating system.
ReadWriteWeb covered the company's first official extensions in the Spring. Since then Google announced the Chrome OS. As explained in the Chrome OS launch, "Every app you write for the web is a Google Chrome OS app." By embracing 3rd party extensions, Google is one step closer to rendering desktop operating systems obsolete. As extensions replace traditional desktop applications, users will become more accustomed to syncing their data to the cloud. The success of Chrome will depend on whether or not the extensions affect the speed that users have grown to love. The company will open the Extensions Gallery up to "trusted testers" in the near future.
Developers can contribute to the project by uploading creations to the Developer Dashboard here. If you need ideas, a good place to start would be to look at the "Most Shared" in the Firefox Add-ons Gallery and think about how you can port some of those gems over for the Chrome experience.
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Google’s Aaron Boodman and Erik Kay will be running a session at Add-on-Con on developing Chrome extensions. if you are interested in learning more visit http://add-on-con.com
Porting the Firefox Gmail manager addon would be a welcome addition to Chrome.
About time that Chrome supports extensions--it's actually a very good browser but the lack of extensions kind of limits its appeal. I'd like to see Chrome offer an extension that can temporarily switch to using the "Trident" page layout engine used by Internet Explorer 8.0 so some web pages can display correctly, just like the IE Tab extension for Firefox 3.5.x versions.
@webcam
Already possible using a IE Tab extension for Chrome