14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been building towards this for months now and it looks like the way may finally be over, Google Chrome is about to get extensions. Well, to be more precise, Google Chrome Beta is about to get extensions and everyone else will get to enjoy the upcoming Extensions Gallery which is set to launch by the week's end, according to TechCrunch.
Google does things a little different when it comes to software. Most likely a trait of its web-app background, Google has shunned the usual release cycle of traditional desktop software for its Chrome web browser and opted for frequent releases and small updates. This means that big new features and announcements are rare and don't pack the same punch when they been around in one form or another for months.
This is why frequent Chrome users may not be too excited by the launch, extensions have been around for a while now. But the fact is that, while extensions support has been built into the browser actual extensions are a little harder to come by, which is why the Gallery is very important, developers have finally realized it's time to build for Chrome as well so. Not only will there be a centralized, officially-sanctioned place to find extensions, but there will finally be choice.
The Gallery is expected to be launched this week ahead of the Add-on-Con 09, an add-on conference as the name very clearly suggests, which it counts Google as one of its sponsors. For now, the Gallery will only support the Windows Beta build, the Mac build, which is due any day now, will apparently skip on extensions for the time being. The dev channel builds on all supported platforms, Windows, Mac and Linux will likely get access to the Gallery as well.
TechCrunch says that the Gallery will be very much like Chrome's Theme Gallery, just a big list of extensions and a single click install. It's unlikely that the Extensions Gallery will as spartan as it would render it pretty much useless. It may be feasible that this could work for a small number of extensions, but it wouldn't scale very well. At the very least, there should be some search functionality, a category system and some sort of filters and sorting options.