I discovered this new feature completely by chance: I was simply reading the morning news on The Independent. It seems to work for Stable, Beta and Developer builds of Chrome (version 4.X or newer) -- so check it out!

Some preliminary searches don't seem to turn up anything... but if it works in the Stable build, the functionality must have existed for some time. I can't see anything obvious in the HTML or JavaScript of The Independent's site -- but maybe there was an update to the Extensions Gallery itself. Perhaps Perhaps, if the domain names on the site and extension match, it displays the yellow notification bar?

Either way, it's a great way for Google to draw the average user's attention to Chrome's extension abilities!

Perhaps other readers have spotted the same alert on other sites? Does anyone know how to enable it?

I should write a Download Squad extension and see if it works...

Update: It's a clever piece of JavaScript on the Independent site -- and nothing to do with Google!

Google Chrome now alerts you if a site has its own extension (check it out!) originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 12 May 2010 09:30:00 EST.