Is it possible to show and hide the browser action icon from the options page?
I know how to do it with the page actions using the show and hide methods, but I don't see any similarities in browser actions.
From https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/browserAction:
If you want to create an icon that isn't always visible, use a page action instead of a browser action.
In other words: no, this isn't possible. Browser actions are permanent by design.
Google defined Browser Action as static buttons, and Page Action as dynamic ones.
Google is very careful with Chrome's interface, and don't want people use buttons in a different way they are "supposed" to do.
They do so because they think users have tu put an effort to learn to use Chrome, and Google want to present a consistent, coherent and minimalist user interface.
You don't have much freedom with regard to Chrome user interface.
Related
I'm working on an extension that's supposed to use the content of the page to determine whether to show an interface to the user.
The ways to show an interface, if I'm correct, are using a browser action or a page action.
And neither can be triggered programmatically. But content scripts could be written to inject an equivalent GUI into the webpage.
So, does it make sense to modify the DOM using content-scripts to display an interface as a substitute for page action? It seems like an obvious work around to me, and I'm sure there are good reasons to not let page actions be triggered programmatically.
Well, modifying DOM must be done by only Content Scripts, as that is the reason they exist.
Want to fetch any data from current page, alter anything in the page, add new UI in the page - whatever, content script will help you do that.
It has nothing to do with Page script Or Browser Script.
YES, you can not programatically trigger page/browser action. It has to be done by explicit clicking.
But if you want to open a UI by clicking a chrome extension, then there is a popup js for that.
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:
So using the Google Chrome Top Sites api has values for the url and the title, but when you load the default google chrome page it also has an image of those sites, is there any way to get that sort of image for an extension? If not how does google get that image and how can you get an image of the the user's top viewed website?
Since that it isn't possible to get a screenshot of a page without loading it inside a tab, Chrome is simply getting those screenshots while you're browsing your favourite sites. You can tell this easily because sometimes sites and images do not coincide (e.g. sometimes my facebook.com top site has the image of my profile page, but links to the home).
Then, if you want your screenshots of the Top Sites, you'll have to start without screenshots, and create them while the user browses the web by using the chrome.tabs API to check when a tab loads one of the Top Sites (listening to the event onUpdated), and get a screenshot of that tab using captureVisibleTab.
NOTES: make sure that you've requested the permission for "<all_urls>" in your manifest, which is required for captureVisibleTab to work. Additionally, you may find this question and its answer helpful.
It's unfortunately not possible*. Chrome stores those thumbnails internally in URIs not accessible from an extension.
There is an existing feature request: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=11854
If you look at the comments, one of the main use cases is to access site thumbnails to replicate the New Tab page.
Do star the feature request above to raise its priority if you want this functionality implemented.
* By that I mean that it's not possilbe to access Chrome's own internal store of thumbnails.
Furthermore, as Marco suggested the way to replicate that would be tab capture, but you can't do it "in the background" for privacy reasons - a user must make an explicit gesture (e.g. click the extension's button, press a shortcut, etc.) to perform capture.
Marco's answer is valid now, captureVisibleTab should be accessible upon events. But yes, as of now Chrome forces you to have very broad permissions and maintaining your own thumbnail store.
every time I go to a particular web page I hit F12 delete a node and uncheck a few absolute position boxes on two others. I would like to know how to do this with a chrome extension.
I have not made a chrome extension before so I thorough guide to making one would also be appreciated
I recommend you to read this guide first as Google suggests.
http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/getstarted.html
Also, I think in order to implement what you want to do, you'll need to use page action.
So, take a look at this page about page action.
http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/pageAction.html
I'm looking to build a chrome extension that allows the user to have an independent subwindow that is the same in each tab (for example you are taking notes and the notes are synchronized among each tab). Also, clicking a link should not destroy this subwindow.
One solution is to inject an iframe in each tab, and try to synchronize this data serverside and send back to each client tab, as it is updated.
This seems very tedious, plus the iframe would be provided by a third party, and I want to make it the easiest for them.
Is there a way I can have a shared dom piece and display it in its current state across several tabs?
There's an API (still experimental as of Chrome 17) that does more or less exactly what you want. If you visit about:flags, and enable "Panels" (they're enabled by default in Dev and on Canary (and on ChromeOS)), you'll be able to use chrome.windows.create with a type of panel to create a floating pane that exists independently from the browser window. That would likely meet your need.
Take a look at the Google Talk extension for an example of how it might work.