Chrome 6 Beta Comes with Goodies for Developers as Well

Google Chrome has seen some big updates over time, especially with its frantic update cycle, but some of the best features don't come from Google, but from outside developers in the form browser extensions. The latest Chrome beta brings even more capabilities for developers as well, not just for the users.

"Since we launched the Google Chrome extension system, one of the most frequent requests we’ve gotten is to add the ability to integrate with the context menu (the menu that pops up when you right-click on a link, image, or web page)," Aaron Boodman, Software Engineer at Google wrote.

"Now in Google Chrome Beta, developers can do just that. The new context menu API allows extension developers to register menu items for all pages or for a subset of pages. Developers can also register menu items for specific operations, like right-clicking on an image or movie," he added.

The usefulness of the feature is obvious, some extensions will be much easier to use if they're available from the right-click menu. The new API is now available in the beta channel and will make it into the stable channel along with the first Chrome 6 stable release.

Google also showcased a couple of extensions that are still in active development and come with a few rough edges. The first is the Omnibox API which, as the name implies, enables developers to access the Omnibox and many of its features.

The second API is the Infobars API which enables developers to create interactive infobars that shows up on top of the tabs in Google Chrome. Google says these infobars are built with just regular HTML code, so they should be fairly easy to modify.

Both of the APIs are now available in the Chrome Beta channel. You can check out a full list of the changes for developers in the latest Chrome beta here.