Google Chrome will eventually support add-ons and user scripts

by Brad Linder Sep 19th 2008

There are plenty of things that set Google Chrome apart from Firefox, Opera, and Internet Explorer. It uses a different rendering engine. It places tabs at the very top of the screen, not under the location bar. It has a single location/search bar. And each browser tab is treated as a separate process by your operating system. Another thing that separates Chrome from the competition? It's not as extendable... yet.

You can install add-ons for web browsers like Firefox that do everything from turn the browser into an FTP client to provide email notifications. And there are user scripts that will let you change the way you interact with web pages. Google Chrome doesn't currently support either type of extensions. But it will.

At the Web 2.0 Expo in New York, Google's Ojan Vafai indicated that Chrome wll support both eventually. But first, the developers want to make sure that add-ons don't cause the browser to become unstable. Firefox add-ons, for example, can bog down the application, making it take longer to launch and more likely to crash.

While you're waiting for Google to figure things out, there are always workarounds that let you install user scripts or block ads in Chrome.

Tags: add-ons, extensions, google-chrome, scripts, userscripts

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jash Sayani said 7:50AM on 9-20-2008

Yeah it should surely have a nice Add-ons gallery like Mozilla Firefox. Chrome is definitely going to beat all browsers eventually.

datter said 10:04AM on 9-20-2008

They said Opera was going to beat everyone out too... same with Flock, yet Firefox is still holding strong. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

kogmedia.com said 5:54PM on 9-20-2008

it's funny, the more i use Chrome, the more unstable it seems to get... crashes a lot more, can't handle sites with flash, hangs every time i close a tab... kinda wierd www.kogmedia.com

Brian said 7:39AM on 9-21-2008

It is in BETA, of course it is going to crash.

mikey said 7:44PM on 9-20-2008

Funny. I still can't scroll up.

Eric C Rusch Jr said 7:44PM on 9-20-2008

Add-ons for Firefox will make it king for the foreseeable future. It's not Mozilla Firefox when I launch it, it's Eric's Firefox that's not like any other. It's perfectly(almost) customized to my wants and needs. Chrome may be light years ahead of the competition under the hood, but for now it's as functional to me as IE.

Calagan said 8:14AM on 9-22-2008

I can't wait to get del.icio.us and a video downloader in chrome

@datter: even though Opera is superior in many ways to Firefox, it didn't succeed due to the microscopic size and Swedish origin of its parent company. With Chrome, it's an entirely different story

@mikey: uninstall your trackpad/mouse driver. If you let the plain MS driver handle your trackpad/mouse then you will be able to scroll up.

Desalegn said 9:30PM on 10-13-2008

I love Chrome. It is fast and simple. I would be so happy if it can support some the crucial add ons like Gspace and adblocks.

nathan said 8:12AM on 10-23-2008

thay need to add auto scroll

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