Last year, Chrome introduced manifest V2 to Apps and Extension developers, which brings a variety of security and API improvements such as a default Content Security Policy. As of Chrome 18, manifest V1 was officially deprecated. At the time, we published our manifest version support schedule to give developers transparency and insight into our plans for migrating to the new version.

Today, we’re announcing a slight update to that schedule, to let developers know that they have until Monday, March 4, 2013 to make updates to their existing manifest V1-based items. After that date, the Chrome Web Store will block all updates to products based on manifest V1 unless the update includes switching it to manifest V2.

Chrome: Remember that six months or so when Google searches displayed tweets along with normal results? Twitter stopped that, but if you're a Chrome user you can add that functionality back in with the browser extension HashPlug. More »

Even though Chrome extensions and legacy packaged apps are similar at a technical level, users have very different expectations for how extensions and apps should look and behave. Users expect extensions to interact with the whole browser, whereas they expect apps to act solely in their containing tab or window.

Until now, all Chrome legacy packaged apps could request the same permissions and use the same APIs as extensions to interact with Chrome. In order to make the capabilities of legacy packaged apps more closely align with user expectations, we’ve decided to limit the extensions permissions that legacy packaged apps can request.

Beginning this week, you won’t be able to publish legacy packaged apps in the Chrome Web Store that request any of the following permissions:
(a) any host permissions, including "< all urls >" 
(b) the top-level "content_scripts" key 
(c) the "debugger", "devtools", "pageCapture", "plugin", "proxy", "tabs'", "history", "webNavigation" permissions 
(d) the top-level "npapi" key 

Chrome: DeadMouse is a Chrome extension that allows you to surf the web with only your keyboard. The idea is simple: if you want to click a link, just start typing it. DeadMouse will show you that you've selected it by making it wiggle on the page. All you have to do is press enter to choose it, tab to select the next option, or delete to cancel your selection. More »

Chrome and Google TV: I recently discovered that Google TV is actually pretty great, and ever since I've been hearing about cool stuff people are doing with the platform. One such example is Chromemote, a Chrome extension that can control your Google TV. More »

Firefox/Chrome: RightInbox is an awesome tool for boosting Gmail's capabilities.

Are you ever looking at a web page with great information but want to find out if there's a simple, more easily-digestible version in video form? That's when it comes time to search on YouTube—except then you have to make another window or tab or leave the web page to perform that search. Search On YouTube is a Chrome extension that puts a tiny little YouTube viewer in your toolbar so you can search easily and trouble-free. More »

Coders love text editor Vim because you can do everything from the keyboard, avoiding detours into into slow, distracting mouse-click work. Here's how a single Chrome extension can change your browsing habits in similar get-what-you-came-for fashion.More »

If you’re a Chrome extensions power user, you may be familiar with a task manager that looks like this:

That’s a lot of extensions running! Most of the time, they’re probably just sitting idle, waiting for the user to interact with them. Do they really need to be running and using your memory all the time?

Over the last several months, we've been working on a new feature for the extension system called Event Pages that we think will help reduce the memory used by these idle extensions. 

How They Work 

Event pages are an evolution of background pages, with one major improvement: rather than running in the background all the time, an event page only runs when it is handling events. Once an event page becomes idle, it is unloaded, freeing memory until the next time it’s needed. Learn more from the event page documentation.

To help event pages support some important use cases, we’re also developing a few new APIs.

• The alarms API allows an extension to wake itself up at set times, to support features like periodically syncing data to the cloud. 
• Some new events let extensions know when they have been installed, or when their event page is being unloaded. 
• A declarative version of the webRequest API lets extensions do network interception without the need for a background page at all. 

Try it Out 

We plan to release event pages to Chrome’s beta and stable channels late this summer, but you can start experimenting with them on the developer channel today. Try converting your overweight extension to event pages, and let us know how it works.

When trying to upgrade to the latest LastPass update from the LastPass web site, I ran into an error claiming "Extensions, apps, and user scripts cannot be installed from this web site." If you ever run into a similar error, here's how to work around it. More »

Cross-posted from the Google Developers Blog.

A year ago, we released a preview of the PageSpeed Insights Chrome Developer Tools extension, which analyzes the performance of web pages and provides suggestions to make them faster. Today, we’re releasing version 2.0 of the PageSpeed Insights extension, available in the Chrome Web Store.

PageSpeed Insights analyzes all aspects of a web page load and points out the specific things you can do to make your page faster. For instance, PageSpeed Insights can inform you about an expensive JavaScript call that blocks the renderer for too long, remind you about that new photo on the front page of your web site that you might have forgotten to resize or optimize, or recommend changing the way you load third-party content so it no longer blocks the page load.

PageSpeed Insights for Chrome is a Chrome Developer Tools extension that analyzes all aspects of the page load, including resources, network, DOM, and the timeline. If you're already familiar with Chrome Developer Tools, you'll find that PageSpeed Insights integrates with a toolset you're already using.

Using technologies like Native Client, PageSpeed Insights is able to run the open-source PageSpeed Insights SDK securely and with the performance of native code. Leveraging the Insights SDK enables the Chrome extension to automatically optimize the images, CSS, JavaScript and HTML resources on your web page and provide versions of those resources that you can easily deploy on your website.

We hope you’ll give PageSpeed Insights for Chrome a try and start optimizing your web pages today. We’d love to hear from you, as always. Please try PageSpeed Insights for Chrome, and give us feedback on our mailing list with questions, comments, and new features you’d like to see.

Chrome/Firefox: When friends on Facebook share a link with the social reader apps popular with web sites like the Guardian or Yahoo, it means you need to install the Social Reader app and share that you just read an article if you want to read it. Unsocialize is a Firefox and Chrome extension that adds a right-click menu to read those articles without sharing or installing anything.More »

Chrome/Firefox: Ever run into a video that's blocked because you aren't in a supported region? It's annoying, but ProxMate is a simple extension for Chrome and Firefox that unblocks region-specific content from YouTube, Hulu, and Grooveshark.More »

Chrome: Twitter is a great source for news, articles, and a good way to stay in touch with friends, but if your friends are obsessed with some annoying celebrity that you have no desire to read about, Purge Twitter Trends is a Chrome extension that strips specific celebrity trending topics from your feed so you can read in peace without being forced to unfollow them. More »

Chrome: If Chrome's built-in new tab page looks a little plain to you, or if you like the look of Microsoft's Metro UI, MySites is a Chrome extension that changes the new tab page into a start page decorated with a web search bar and colorful tiles that you can click to go straight to your most commonly accessed sites and favorites. More »

Chrome: Whatever you use private browsing for, sometimes you want to start your secret browsing from the page you're already on. Incognito This moves your current page to a new incognito window, so you can continue browsing privately without starting from scratch. More »

Gmail is Google's golden child, but it isn't perfect. It's full of numerous user interface elements you don't necessarily want or need and there's no way to turn them off. Gmelius offers you a way out of ads, the people bar, and more while also making Gmail easier to navigate. It's a great extension, it's free, and can dramatically improve your experience in less than a minute. More »

Chrome: Most of you use RSS regularly, but also note it's pretty annoying to stumble on an RSS feed that truncates the article for the sole purpose of getting you to click the link and leave your RSS reader. We feel your pain, and Google Reader Inline is a Chrome Extension that lets you read the full article without leaving Google Reader to do it. More »

Chrome: We've mentioned lots of ways to keep your bookmarks in sync across browsers and across computers, but if your bookmarks are older than your choice of browser, it might be time to clean them up, get rid of any duplicates you may have, and get rid of any old, dead links that you may have lurking in an old bookmarks folder from way back. Bookmark Sentry for Chrome does just that. More »

Although there are tons of awesome Chrome themes available in the Chrome Web Store, perhaps you want a more personalized look for your browser. My Chrome Theme is one of the simplest tools to customize Chrome's appearance, such as the background image and tab colors. More »