Google and Mozilla are failing to support browser extension developers

Post by Fnoord » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 12:50 PM UTC

cartlidge wrote: post #157

giancarlostoro wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has a task manager now. They should improve on this to compete with Googles. Nobody wants to type a URL when they can hit an easy shortcut.

I have a hope of remembering about:performance. I can bookmark it, and it's there in autocomplete. You can make a link to it in your webpage or in a nice plugin (which, once it gets a couple thousand users, you can sell to an honest businessman for tens of thousands). Shift-Escape? what? I'm supposed to just randomly press every key combination till something happens?

Post by pier25 » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #78

bduerst wrote: post #20

>The Chrome Web Store and the Microsoft Store do not offer features for supporting extension developers. That doesn't seem right - doesn't Google let developers monetize extensions in the chrome web store? You can publish Hosted Apps, Chrome Apps, Chrome Extensions, and Themes in the Chrome Web Store. Collectively these are called simply "Items". You have many choices when it comes to making money from items that you…

The web store ecosystem is atrocious. You cannot rely on Google's browser services to make money. They will randomly take down your extension for a ~month in response to malformed (i.e. invalid and illegal) DMCA notices, and they barely maintain the developer tools - I've watched key parts of the developer dashboard break and go unfixed for months even after reporting them. If you want to do this stuff you have to do…

Post by Bjartr » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

thepangolino wrote: post #138

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your extensions are listed along with their resource usage in about:performance !

There’s a real discoverability issue with those kind of pages. They should be listed somewhere in some submenu. You can’t expect people to go through all the documentation like they used to go through manuals in decades past.

Post by bosie » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #159

callumlocke wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the author of JSON Formatter [1] with 989,000 users. I probably get a couple of offers a year for it. Of those that have offered specific sums, they ranged from from $10-20k. I always reject them, because it’s pretty obvious they want to turn it into malware. I’ve had a couple of cases where I felt they went to some effort to schmooze me first, presenting themselves as having benign intentions, almost like a care…

$20k seems like a pretty lowball offer? Close to 1M users (plus potential for further growth) and you have me expecting at least $400k... Or, am I expecting too much?

Post by rifung » Fri, Aug 02, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #119

rifung wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for Google, opinions are my own. > Sorry to all Googlers here for being so blunt, and feel free to point out one or more examples from the last few years where Google has prioritized their users above quarterly / yearly profits. No need to apologize =] An example that comes to mind is the current focus on accessibility. I think from an objective financial/engineering perspective, it's much preferable to just i…

I'm curious. What specifically would you like to see removed from Chrome?