[HN Gopher] My experience of the Chrome Extension submission pro...
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My experience of the Chrome Extension submission process
Author : lcmchris
Score : 50 points
Date : 2023-06-09 17:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (meetingdolphin.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (meetingdolphin.com)
| Glench wrote:
| On the flip side, I've never had any serious issues across a
| bunch of extensions, but sometimes I hear stories.
|
| Btw your extension looks really professional -- nice job! Are you
| trying to monetize it?
| lcmchris wrote:
| I am (at some point)! I actually built this as a somewhat hack
| to get users whom I can interview. There were 2 existing
| extensions that had similar features and I built this to
| replace them.
| Glench wrote:
| Oh nice! Maybe you'd be interested in the tool I built to
| take payments in extensions: https://extensionpay.com
| paranoidrobot wrote:
| > A good way to inform your users is to combine
| chrome.runtime.OnUpdateAvailable and chrome.tabs.create(<INSERT
| blog URL>) .
|
| This is terrible behaviour.
|
| I can't express how much it frustrates me that every extension
| and every service thinks it's a great idea to launch new tabs or
| overlay the screen I'm trying to use with their self promotion
| about some new update or change they rolled out.
|
| Unless there is something I have to know about immediately
| because there will be significant side effects (data loss,
| monetary, physical danger, that sort of thing) don't do it.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I also dislike it but please blame/advocate for Chrome change
| rather than devs with zero good options. Google created and
| maintains these conditions.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| It's pretty responsible for devs to at least let us _know_ when
| they make changes.
|
| Complain about it all you want in software where the user
| controls the update schedule, but extension devs don't have any
| other way to alert users to changes.
| lapcat wrote:
| They could simply badge the extension icon.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| I assume many hide their extension icons. I do agree with
| not popping up a new tab or whatever, though.
| bunga-bunga wrote:
| No, I really don't care. I have hundreds of apps on my phone,
| most of which I use once every few months or even years.
| Imagine if they opened some random popup every time someone
| decided they made _huge changes._
|
| Same goes for some extensions, which most likely don't have
| (or shouldn't have) fundamental changes that require
| immediate action.
|
| Don't bug your users.
|
| Note: I'm a Web Extension developer too.
| lcmchris wrote:
| I think I am convinced, my wording here definitely does not
| help ('good' -> 'possible'). For sure a new feature does not
| warranty intrusive browser behaviour. Will make some edits.
| donatj wrote:
| As someone who always has a billion tabs open, I really wanted a
| tab search. I built one, "Tabasco"[1] a number of years now.
|
| Chrome has a sort of built-in search now, but it doesn't support
| fancy things like quotes or a ! Not operator.
|
| Submitting updates almost always take between a couple minutes
| and an hour to get approved. Been REALLY quick. I wonder if
| having the absolutely minimal permissions helps with the process.
|
| Then a couple years ago I hit
|
| > Item has a blank description field, or missing icons or
| screenshots, and appears to be suspicious.
|
| After a couple rounds of beefing up my screenshots and
| description, I was still getting rejected. Each rejection took a
| couple days.
|
| Eventually, I contacted support asking what I could do. I never
| even got a response, my extension just got passed out of nowhere.
|
| I haven't hit any rejections in the time since. In hindsight, my
| suspicious of someone thought the name "Tabasco" may I have
| implied connection to the brand? I thought it was generic enough
| when I chose it because of the pepper.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tabasco/apnefdpgai...
| lcmchris wrote:
| Interesting! I concur with your suspicion. In the official
| docs, it mentioned that the name has to be quite unique.
|
| Google Support has never been good so getting no response is
| also to be expected... Glad you got it fixed though.
| lapcat wrote:
| Related: Another cluster of potentially malicious Chrome
| extensions (2 days ago)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36240652
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| "However, sometimes I find that it does not update properly. On
| days when I physically see a friend install it, the numbers don't
| go up."
|
| I have a hard time decoding the statistics dashboard. Every day
| my extension gets uninstalled more times than installed but the
| user count remains stable. Why?
| Animats wrote:
| I stopped supporting Chrome for an extension when Google started
| acting like they were in charge of a walled garden. At one point,
| I had identical code working as an extension for both Firefox and
| Chrome, and didn't have to do anything extra for Chrome. But
| Google added new requirements, and it wasn't worth dealing with
| Google to support an old no-revenue extension.
| imadj wrote:
| My experience publishing "HNRelevant" was also straight forward.
| It was my first time too, and reading others previous experiences
| had me worried.
|
| Last update was approved almost instantly, I had to douple check.
| Propably because it's quite simple.
| prahladyeri wrote:
| The review process seems quite intimidating as described by the
| OP. Things like use of localStorage is almost like a given in any
| extension these days and they ask justification for every
| permission you ask.
| greggsy wrote:
| So they should - extensions are very popular with consumers,
| and are a notoriously effective means of spreading malware.
| There's a few current stories on the topic, which is odd,
| because the problem has been a problem for nearly ten years
| now.
|
| Google spend a lot of money developing extremely effective
| security research capabilities, while completely ignoring the
| dumpster fire that is their app and extension stores.
| robomartin wrote:
| > while completely ignoring the dumpster fire that is their
| app and extension stores.
|
| This is one of the factors that keeps me away from trying
| Android phones. I don't trust Google for anything other than
| search. And even that has become somewhat questionable over
| the years. I do trust Apple. Even though I own a couple of
| them, I don't care for their computers. As far as phones
| though, I will not consider anything other than iPhone.
| zenapollo wrote:
| Search has become a rotting dumpster that will be fully
| ablaze soon enough. Works great as a calculator and spell
| checker though.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Thing is... There is pretty much nothing malicious one can do
| with localstorage.
| jxf wrote:
| This isn't accurate. There are any number of XSS attacks
| that can be performed, which then allow you to look at
| secrets or tokens in localStorage, for example.
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(page generated 2023-06-10 23:02 UTC)