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posted by chromas on Wednesday April 08 2020, @12:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the why-not-add-an-icon-to-customize-your-icon-bar dept.

Google tests hiding Chrome extension icons by default, developers definitely not amused by the change:

Google is testing a user-interface change that will hide Chrome extensions by default, which is not going down well with developers.

Instead of allowing extension icons to appear one after another to the right of the omnibox – the input box for URLs and search queries – the Chrome Extensions Platform team is trying out a design change that hides the graphical buttons in a menu accessed by a puzzle piece icon.

The test is called the Chrome Extension Toolbar menu and can be enabled from the Chrome Experiments interface, which is accessible by entering chrome://flags/#extensions-toolbar-menu into the omnibox.

"Our goal with this new UI is to make it easier for users to see what extensions can access their data," explained extensions developer advocate Simeon Vincent in a post to the Chromium extensions forum last week.

"When the user clicks the puzzle piece icon, the extension menu opens and displays a list of all enabled extensions the user has installed. The extension list is grouped by the level of data access the extension has on the currently selected tab."

[...] The point of the Chrome Extension Toolbar experiment is to make the privacy implications of extensions, and the permissions they request, more visible to users.

[...] Users will be able to "pin" extension icons so they remain visible and available for interaction, but they have to choose to do so upon installation. That's the opposite of the behavior in Chrome 80, the current stable version of Google's browser, where extension icons get pinned by default. Developers of extensions thus can no longer assume that users will be able to engage with their code.

[...] "I completely agree with everyone else's sentiment, hiding icons by default seems like a terrible user experience and will cause many more issues than it fixes," wrote Evan Carothers, founder of recruiting and sales extension ZapInfo. "The excuse of keeping the UI uncluttered makes no sense considering the users are opting to install these extensions."

Carothers argued it would be better to continue pinning extensions by default and to provide users with an option to unpin if they really can't deal with the clutter. To do otherwise, he contended, will limit extension usage and adoption.


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  • (Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday April 08 2020, @09:07PM

    by stretch611 (6199) on Wednesday April 08 2020, @09:07PM (#980385)

    If only...

    Then I can create a script to simulate clicking that button every fifteen seconds.

    I'm sure it would become a very popular download even if I charged for it. :P

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
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