My first Chrome Extension. Looking for constructive criticism and advice

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/musicality-music-player/fjiolbglibkahkipcdgeepdfdgfkdbee

by kylekampy • 12 years ago

5 5 12 years ago

chrome.google.com

flippyhead• 12 years ago

Right off the bat, I spent 5 seconds looking at the plugin page and wasn't immediately sure what the plugin does. There's a list of features starting with "Playback Controls" and "Now playing information"... I assume it's a music player maybe? I'd suggest working up a short, succinct sentence that explains in very simple terms what the plugin does and make sure it's the thing I first see!

kylekampy3• 12 years ago

Great point. That was one of my concerns. I was hoping the screenshots were self explanatory, but that's probably a bad assumption.

I'll work on refining the title and description. It's really a quick-and-easy controller for online music players.

Thanks. :)

kylekampy3• 12 years ago

I know the permissions are overbearing. The reason it requests permissions for all sites instead of just the supported players is because of the way Chrome updates extensions. If I were to go that route and at some point add another player (which happens often), Chrome would disable the extension for everyone until they re-approve the changed permissions.

I believe there is a way to do it dynamically and allow the user to choose which players they want to allow access to, and then accept the changed permissions. However a majority of my user base will not care, and would actually prefer the one click install ease of use. At least that's my reasoning.

For those of you really concerned, you can download the source and modify manifest.json to change where the contentscript is injected for peace of mind. https://github.com/kkamperschroer/Musicality

willnorris• 12 years ago

Chrome forcing the user to re-approve the extension when it tries to access more data is a feature, not something to work around. That alone is reason enough for me to say "thanks, but no thanks"

kylekampy3• 12 years ago

I agree with you. As a privacy-conscious user of Chrome extensions, I'm glad Chrome does things this way. There are too many horror stories out there.

I'll continue to look into ways I can deal with this without blindly asking for everything. I haven't found a good solution yet, but that doesn't mean there isn't a better way to do it out there.

My first Chrome Extension. Looking for constructive criticism and advice

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