Opera will only allow extensions from the official repository, by default

Sep 7, 2012 09:51 GMT  ·  By

Opera is going the Google route and is limiting the places where you can install extensions from. Unlike Google though, it's not a complete block, but it's not that much better either.

Of course, the move is listed as a security conscious one and it is to some degree, but it's also designed to get developers to put their extensions in the Opera Addons gallery and not host them by themselves.

The move was announced a few weeks back and it's now becoming a reality, in the latest Opera 12.50 experimental snapshot. Users will not be able to install any addons from outside of addons.opera.com at all, by default.

Before they can install an addon from a third-party location, they have to add that domain to a whitelist. The whitelist will only contain the official Opera location by default.

"Having studied how people install and use extensions we came to the conclusion that current security dialog is somewhat deficient, in that many users will simply click-through it and add new repositories to the trusted list, without fully understanding the consequences of such an action," Opera explained.

That's the same reason that Google gave. A few months back, Chrome started blocking extension installs from anywhere outside of the Chrome Web Store.

Unlike Opera though, Google is not giving users any option, there's no whitelist, Chrome users now simply can't inline install any extension hosted at a third-party site.

The only option for Chrome users is to download the extension, turn on developer mode and install it manually.

That's also available for Opera users, meaning that developers can still work on their creations and test them easily without having to upload them to the addon repository first.

There are few reasons for developers not to host their extensions/addons in the official repositories. They benefit from the exposure, their addons may be featured on the homepages, they're easier to find via search and so on.

The downside is, as always, that they're at the mercy of Opera, Google, Apple, Microsoft or whoever else is operating said extension/addon/app marketplace/store.