If the schedule for Google’s big annual developer conference is any indication, we should expect to see an extension platform released for Chrome sometime this May.
Programmer Nicholas Moline has noticed a session called “Developing extensions for Google Chrome” among the 38 sessions posted to the Google I/O website. It sits alongside two other Chrome-specific sessions (the others titled “Exploring Chrome internals” and “V8: Building a high performance JavaScript engine” respectively) and carries the following description:
Learn how Google Chrome makes it easy to write extensions using the web technologies you already know. This talk will cover the basics of the extension system (distribution/packaging, installation, updates), as well as the different APIs to enhance with the browser.
This isn’t a guarantee that extensions will be released before or during the conference, but it’s hard to believe Google would hold a session on the topic if we didn’t see them sometime around the date of the conference.
Extensions, which are very popular among Firefox users, were notably absent from Chrome when it launched last September. Google has since made it clear that it has always planned to provide for them at some point. However, many have taken it into their hands to hack away at Chrome on their own.
As Google Operating System points out, Google has already enabled user scripts for Chrome. A draft of the extensions model can also be found here.