An Early Look At Chrome’s Extensions System

It’s not officially released, but a gallery-like site for extensions has made itself known into the latest development builds of Google Chrome for Windows and Linux. Take a peek at what’s coming, presumably very soon, in these development screenshots.

The Download Squad blog was the first to notice the new new thing in Chrome — namely, a jigsaw-like page corner in Chrome’s new tab page, next to a message at the bottom that reads “New! Chrome now has bookmark sync and extensions!”, with both the message and the corner piece linking to http://chrome.google.com/extensions

I saw the same link appear in the chrome://extensions page on my copy of Chromium, from a nightly build Ubuntu repository. Clicking that link, however, redirects you to Google’s home page. But as many are guessing, Chrome/Chromium wouldn’t push out a new link to leave sitting dead for too long, so we’ll keep watching that page to see when a full-fledged gallery pops up.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler dove into Chromium’s Code Reviews section, and finds screenshots and discussions indicating that Chrome’s extensions will be able to add icons to Chrome’s top toolbar, inside the address bar, and in the bottom-right status bar, and that developers will also be allowed to customise items such as Chrome’s new tab page. Right out of the gate, developers are also indicating extensions from Google itself tied to its Maps, News and a Gmail checker.

Exciting stuff, and even more so if many of Firefox’s developers take notice and bring over some of the same functionality that hardcore Mozilla users could never imagine leaving behind.

Top and bottom photos from TechCrunch; new tab page image from Download Squad.

Google preparing to launch Chrome Extensions gallery? [Download Squad]
A Big Google Chrome Extensions Push Is Imminent (Pictures) [TechCrunch]