Is there a way to show/hide a chrome extension's icon based on the current tab's URL/location?
I'm writing a utility that I only want to use on certain sites, and I would like to be able to access it in one click while on those sites (i.e. not in the extension overflow menu) but hide it otherwise.
The DeclarativeContent API almost provides what I'm looking for, but it only greys out the icon, rather than hiding it entirely.
Is this possible?
Unfortunately this isn't possible (anymore). Declarative content or not, the presence of your extension's icon near the address bar is only decided by the user by pinning/unpinning it from the extension menu. In older versions of Chrome using chrome.pageAction would result in the extension icon being shown inside the address bar only for the matching websites declared in the manifest. However, things changed a while ago (actually quite some time, maybe >1y, can't recall exactly when): now all extension icons are on the right side outside the address bar and can be pinned/unpinned by the user, meaning they are either always shown or never shown. Pinned icons that use pageAction are greyed out when inactive (see this documentation page).
Related
Both Chrome and Firefox provide "Network" pages in their DevTools, which are very useful. I'm working with software which adds headers to HTTP responses to communicate performance information. I would like to be able to see this information at-a-glance in the Network panel, but looking at the relevant Chrome and MDN docs, I can't see any way to modify existing DevTools panels.
Is it possible to do this? If so, how?
Both Google Chrome and Firefox allow you to modify the shown columns and to show specific header values. It seems however that only in Chrome you can also add custom headers.
To do so, open the Network tab in the Dev Tools and make sure there is at least one entry in the list. Then right click on one of the table headers (like Name, Path, Method, etc.) to open the context menu that allows you to select which columns you want to show. From this context menu go to "Response Headers" -> "Manage Header Columns...". Then in the modal that pops up click "Add custom header..." and enter the name of the header you want to show. Click "Add" and it should now be part of the overview table.
In Firefox it works the same, but you can only select one of the predefined headers.
I am developing a chrome extension. When I install it one of its icon is displayed in address bar. I want that icon should not be displayed after installation.
Starting with Chrome 49 (see the announcement and detailed description) all extension icons are displayed in the browser toolbar:
[...] each extension the user has installed has a persistent UI surface. By default, this will be in the toolbar to the right of the omnibox (where browser actions are now), and the user can choose to hide ("overflow") these actions in the Chrome menu.
The reason for this is to protect our users. We've heard too frequently that many users are unaware of the extensions they have installed, whether this is due to sideloading, installation by phishing, or simply the user forgetting how many and which are installed. Unfortunately, extensions consume computing resources, and may have significant security, privacy, and performance impacts. Because of this, we've decided we need to increase user visibility.
What this means for your extension:
If the extension has a browser action: Nothing! (Apart from the slightly different hide/overflow functionality.)
If the extension has a page action: The extension will be given a persistent icon in the toolbar. On pages where the extension's page action wouldn't normally be visible, the action will be greyed out, indicating that it doesn't want to act. On pages it does want to act, it will be fully-colored.
If the extension has no action: Similar to page actions, the extension will be given a persistent icon in the toolbar. It will be shown with the greyed-out look all the time.
Displaying the action persistently, even in the cases of a previously hidden page action or an extension with no action, is necessary because the presence of an action doesn’t always correlate with the extension acting. We also can’t show the action conditionally on, e.g., a per-tab basis, because there are many actions that are not correlated with any tab. In order to ensure users are aware of the extensions they have installed that could be affecting their browser, we need to ensure each extension is visible.
We've done our best to limit the functionality this breaks, and hope you understand the trade-off between developer inconvenience and user benefit. Thank you for understanding as we keep our users safe!
An end user of your extension may manually hide the icon either by adjusting the overall toolbar width (click the space between addressbar and toolbar and drag) or by rightclicking an icon and selecting Hide or Show:
Is it possible to hide the Chrome extension button that gets added to the tool bar by default (without the user having to right click the button to hide it)?
It serves no purpose as the functionality of the extension I have created is only accessible via the right click menu.
No, because of the original reason for this behavior - making the user aware they have the extension installed.
I understand it makes little sense for new extension installation, but I doubt Chrome developers would back down on it - so a feature request is unlikely to succeed.
I am building an extension for Chrome and Can't decide If I should use chrome.windows.create type popup , panel or detached panel. I could not find a comparative study of the three options . Any links or short description of positives and limitations of each will be helpful .
Thanks
You are having difficulty understanding it, because unless you specifically enabled an experimental feature, they are exactly the same, or rather the latter ones are ignored and a popup type is created.
Unfortunately, this means that this API is unavailable for general use until Google decides to mark it stable.
Quoting the docs:
The 'panel' and 'detached_panel' types create a popup unless the '--enable-panels' flag is set.
As for what panels are, here is the API proposal with detailed description.
Panels are windows that are visible to the user even while the user is interacting with other applications. The small windows are positioned at the bottom of the screen, with minimal manual window management by the user. This API will allow extension developers to create and use panels.
[...]
An extension opens small "pop up" windows, for example, separate chat sessions, calculator, media player, stock/sport/news ticker, task list, scratchpad, that the user wants to keep visible while using a different application or browsing a different web site. Scattered "pop up" windows are difficult for the user to keep track of, therefore panels are placed along the bottom of the screen and are "always on top".
The user would like easy control of chat windows: finding them, moving them out of the way, etc. Window management of separate chat "pop ups" is time consuming. All panels can be minimized/maximized together.
If you want a real-life example, the Hangouts extension is whitelisted to use this window type; that's how they make the chat panels:
Since chrome doesn't by default enable panels , this need to be set to display panel behavior instead of popup window . Note that popup windows can be re positioned and one can view console window , but none of it is available in panel .
I am new to writing chrome extensions and was wondering how can i do the following.
How can i make the popup(when someone clicks on extension icon) display at the center of the webpage instead of displaying the popup at the top right corner ?
Use chrome.browserAction.onClicked.addListener(), which fires "when a browser action icon is clicked." Then inject your popup manually into the DOM of the supplied tab, using something like chrome.tabs.executeScript().
Also consider adding a context-menu item, which might make more sense to a user depending on what your extension actually does.