thechromesource – Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources

The Top Non-Bloat Non-Annoying Extensions in Google Chrome

Posted on 23. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

It seems like almost every day I read about some top ten list about the most useful extensions for developers, the most helpful extensions for graphic designers and the most important extensions for bloggers. I say all of that is garbage. I’ve spent a lot more time analyzing Chrome extensions than many others have, and I’ve really only found very few that can enhance your web experience. Seriously, here is a screenshot of the four I actually use.

Forecastfox Weather

Everyone needs to know what the weather is like outside. Just looking out the window is really not good enough. Fortunately, there is a comprehensive weather extension I’ve found called Forecastfox Weather. It allows you to put in your location, and it sits comfortably in your extension collection, telling you via icon what the weather right now is like.

When you click on the icon, you get in depth information on your local weather.

It gives you a forecast for the next few days, saves your recent locations at the top, and even gives you local radar. What else do you need? It’s like the total opposite from the uber-worthless WeatherBug.

PageRank – LinkExtend

I very recently wrote an article about PageRank – LinkExtend. I really feel that everyone who uses the web needs to be aware of a site’s PageRank. Without going too deeply into Google’s ranking system, PageRank basically allows one to see how relevant a site is based on the number of links that go back to the site. When you have the extension active, you can also see what the PageRank of a site is when you use Google Search, helpful for finding authoritative resources instead of straight-up junk sites.

Google Search.

RSS Subscription Extension

This one is pretty simple, yet surprisingly useful; whenever you’re at a site that offers a RSS feed that you can put into your reader, you can click on an icon in your omnibox.

TabJump

There is really a lot of tab-madness going on. You know what I’m talking about – too many browser tabs. I have way too many opem at any time, and I know that many other people have the same problem. TabJump helps that. It sits comfortably in the omnibox until you need it to understand the tabs, and most helpfully it can reopen that tab you regretfully closed.

When you click on the green arrow, you get a breakdown on all the tabs you have opened.

In the End

There are only so many Chrome browser extensions which are useful that don’t simply annoy you while you’re trying to get things done. I’ve evaluated a lot of them to be able to make this post – but if there is one important one I have missed, I’d like to know about it. Let me know, and I’ll take a look!

By the way, if you’re going to make a top “whatever” list of the most useful Chrome extensions, take note that I’m going to be paying attention. No one will realistically be using most of them, and you will get called out right here on this blog. Dear readers, I’m hoping you’ll help me out on this. Thanks.

5 Game Extensions in Chrome to Waste Your Time On

Posted on 14. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Now that it’s no secret that Google secretly invested money in social games maker Zygna, it’s pretty clear Google wants to get into the gaming market. There’s really no reason why they shouldn’t – making games easier to play on a PC than a console is a fantastic idea.

With that in mind, I decided to head over to the Official Chrome Extensions site and try to find some interesting games you can play in the browser right now. This is about as Googley it gets for games right now unless you check out Asteroids from Chrome Experiments. Also, it is expected that the Chrome Web Store will have some in-depth games when it is launched later on this year.

Keep in mind I limited this list to games you can play directly on top of the browser, not extensions that lead you to a gaming website. Hope you enjoy the ones I’ve found!

Mini Putt

There’s nothing like time wasting than spending it playing a little mini golf with this game Mini Putt. While this game feels a little bit like pinball with the speed that you are able to putt the ball, I like being able to try different shots out of the banked corners. I don’t know if this game is going to help my actual putting game, but it sure is fun to “putt” around with when I don’t have anything better to do with my time.

I think that I was spoiled with Snake, since Mini Putt is unable to bring me back to my game once I click out of it. How am I supposed to finish nine holes all at once? That’s asking too much.

McDonald’s Manager Game

It’s pretty clear that the people who developed the McDonald’s Manager Game have a distrusting view of the McDonald’s Corporation, but that’s what makes this game entertaining. In Sims-like fashion, you are put into the role of managing some of the business aspects of the fast food industry, from agriculture operations, marketing and even the day to day hustle of running a single store. Money goes out from business expenditures, and money comes in from customers buying those delicious burgers. It’s pretty fun.

One problem though is that once you start the game, I could not find a way to save it – although I think the point of this extension is just for some good fun from time to time.

King’s Quest

King’s Quest is an old Sierra Entertainment role playing game. You wander around looking for things and actions are based on a list of things that you can do. Although I don’t remember playing King’s Quest before, I remember that Sierra’s games got pretty involved, and I’m sure this game is the same way. I seemed to have a serious issue with constantly falling into the water, as shown above clearly our character in the game never found the time to learn to swim.

This game is a bit buggy, but it’s fun to walk around exploring. I also did not find a way to save – is there a recurring development issue I’m seeing here with these extensions not being able to store game data?

Tetris

Ah yes, the classic Russian puzzle game. They say that Tetris is actually good for your brain, which makes me wonder if that means all other games except for Tetris are slowly killing me, or that simply more professorial type people play Tetris leading to extensive research. That would be a fun academic project. Anyways, this game has been around long enough for everyone to know about it, so there’s really no explaining it.

This version of Tetris, Netris Deluxe, gives you a few customization options, allowing you to enter in your lines and your level. A big bummer with this extension is that you must use the mouse to click on the arrows instead of using a keyboard, which takes some getting used to, and means no turbocharging those blocks to the bottom. If you click out, well, no saved game for you on this one either. Better off using JC-Tetris, although that opens up in a totally different window which is very un-extension like.

Snake

Snake was one of those games that used to come with some older Windows machines. Instead of playing Solitaire or Minesweeper, I used to always enjoy the quick wits of Snake instead which requires you to go after objects that makes the tail of your reptile grow ever longer. This Chrome extension version of the game offers a slow speed easy difficulty and a fast paced hard setting. You just click on the box in the lower right to change the setting.

While this is a more basic version of the game than the original version I remember, it’s still fun. Plus, you can click off the game only to select the extension icon again later to pick up where you left off.

Conclusion

Not being able to save some of these games is a bit frustrating, especially since some of them get pretty involved. I know that many of these games are for fun to show what you can do with a little JavaScript, and hopefully in the future Chrome gaming will become even better. Have you come across a Chrome extension-based game I missed out on? Let me know.

Sync Your Chrome Extensions Between Computers

Posted on 05. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Chris Pirillo has a great video that shows the capability to synchronize extensions with Chromium. Ever been somewhere and forgot that great extension allowing you to open tabs you recently closed? (I use TabJump) Or what about that badass weather extension, except you know that’s not really the name of it? Well, now starting with the developmental builds of the Chrome browser, that’s not going to be a problem.

Wow, that Visual Tabs extension looks mighty interesting, I may have to do a review of that one…

thechromesource Daily: Links for 7/1/10

Posted on 01. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Could the FTC block a possible acquisition by Google of flight search site ITA Software?

There is now an accessibility implementation guide available for developing Chrome browser extensions.

Google is reporting service disruptions in China on the eve of their operating license renewal in that country.

The Chrome Nanny extension helps keep you productive by blocking time-wasting sites – just like what they do at the workplace.

Opera 10.6 is the first final release browser to have Google’s new open video standard WebM implemented.

From Zero to Almost Ten Percent: How Chrome Surpassed Safari

Posted on 30. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

It has been big news recently that Chrome has overtaken Safari as the third most used browser in the U.S. While this statistic is one that’s skewed towards the United States since Chrome and Safari have been neck and neck, the reality is that Chrome took third place worldwide over Safari back in September.

The main reason that America has lagged in this regard is probably the fact that Apple sells so many computers in the United States, coming with the well regarded WebKit-based Safari.

But the point of this post is to understand how Chrome got this far in a period of two years. When I first tried Chrome as an early adopter-type in the beginning of 2009, I liked the design interface and the idea of “sandboxing” where every tab was its own process. The problem with Chrome at that time was one of compatibility: there were sites that did not function correctly with Chrome, a surprise to me because of its WebKit roots.

Over time, which really isn’t long by Google’s measurement, Chrome evolved. Many sites needed to adapt some functionality to Chrome, but for the most part it was the folks at Google working fervently to make the best browser available. Perhaps they knew that they were making the foundations of an operating system at the time, who knows?

Extensions

In December 2009, Google launched the Chrome Extensions web site, an opportunity for the company to better compete with Firefox’s vaunted library of add-ins. Not only did they take an existing idea, they improved on it by putting security limits around extensions at their site, making sure that proper measures are taken to make sure that personal data and important computer processes cannot be compromised through the browser. Clicking around at the Extensions site the other day it appears that there are over five thousand now available.

Translate

In the beginning, Google offered an extension that you could install into Chrome and translate different languages of the web. Then they started adding it into the development Chromium builds, and finally it was released with the launch Chrome 5 to users a few months ago embedded in the browser itself. This feature is so easy to use, and it unlocks the web for everyone to read no matter their language. Google took an existing service they had and put it right into the browser where it’s the most useful.

No Messing With Flash

Maybe Google sees something in Flash that Apple doesn’t, but they decided to take a very different approach to handling Adobe Flash than Cupertino. Instead of eschewing it completely, Google has embraced the technology. Flash is used in YouTube videos, for some streaming music sites and I’ve recently noticed it needs to be installed to use Google Analytics. So, unlike other browsers that require you to install it and then update to newer revisions manually, Google preempts any inconvienence and risk by making it a part of Chrome.

In the End

Relentless innovation has gotten Chrome browser this far. This is due to Chromium as an open source resource as well as the amount of manpower that Google has thrown towards it in anticipation of Chrome OS. I didn’t even get to talk here about interesting features like the omnibox, bookmark sync and geolocation, but they are an aside to these three major developments that are propelling this browser’s growth. How much market share can this browser take from Internet Explorer and Firefox in the months and years to come?

thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/29/10

Posted on 29. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

The folks on the Chromium project are serious about browser security, turning their focus now to extensions.

Will the rival service to Facebook, which may or may not be called Google Me, look anything like Orkut?

Google Apps for Education is proving to be successful; students may soon be spending more time with this than Microsoft Office.

It really not likely that Google would ever completely shut down their operations in China, they will just be patient.

HTML5 means speed: A Google staff engineer recently said they plan to use the technology so that Gmail loads in one second.

thechromesource Daily: Links for 6/15/10

Posted on 15. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Google Earth 5.2 now includes its own WebKit-based browser instead of relying on the system default browser on installed PCs.

Here are some helpful tips for browsing with Chrome safely by using some popular extensions to protect yourself.

Mashable has a quick and dirty guide to what you need to know about Google TV, all in a very short video clip on the subject.

The Chrome browser has been out for several years now, but are there still some features missing for the mass market?

Although currently known as a hub for IT hardware, Taiwan has great aspirations to become a center for cloud computing.

Chromoting Fits the Chrome OS Thin Client Model

Posted on 10. Jun, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

The idea of Chromoting as a way to bridge the gap between the web-enabled environments of the future over to the old model of installed applications on Windows, Mac and Linux seems to fit with the overall theme of Chrome OS. That theme is to get away from natively installed applications, though many of us still will rely on these “legacy” apps to some degree.

In the smartphone realm, the use of remote desktop is possible to go into our computer at home or at work to do things. Chromoting will be no different than that, installed as an extension on a Chrome OS device with another application on whatever other machine you need to remote into.

As cloud computing in ramps up from an operating system standpoint, there is going to be some software that simply will not be available in the cloud. Although it is true when Google says that most major applications are coming out today arrive web-based, there are still some resource-heavy tasks that require a traditional computer. Chromoting thus offers power users the ability to possibly use virtualization on servers to harness both Chrome OS and whatever applications they may need directly through the cloud.

I can see a variety of uses for Chromoting, and not just as a stopgap solution for legacy purposes but also as a path to allow Chrome OS to act as a window to more process-intensive computing capabilities. One would not only be able to use it to access powerful software tools on a thin client Chrome OS device, but the enterprise would benefit as well. I could see IT support analysts, salespeople and health professionals utilizing Chromoting on a tablet or netbook to access resources in a safe and controlled way that perhaps other devices would be unable to.

What other intriguing purposes could Chromoting provide for that I have missed?

thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/29/10

Posted on 29. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Looking to better manage its stockpile of cash, Google is getting Wall Street involved in its newly opened trading operations.

Desktop notifications are now available in Chrome extensions, allowing developers to update users of pending information.

GigOm’s Om Malik thinks that the success of Android means Chrome OS’s future may be in question.

You can now “reshare” in Google Buzz, which sounds and acts similar to retweeting in Twitter to pass along information.

Chrome Web Store Will Allow for Web-Rich Content

Posted on 19. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Today at Google’s I/O developer conference, it was announced that the Chrome Web Store will soon be released. Different from Chrome extensions, the Chrome Store will be a central repository for web-rich applications paired with technology like HTML5 and JavaScript. Several examples were displayed at the show, and it gives example to how Google plans on competing with Apple’s iTunes App Store.

The first example shown was gaming. A company called Unity is working on creating a simple developer platform via Native Client that allows easy ports of games over to a web based format. Not too long ago, this idea of Google investing into gaming was brought up, and it appears that the prediction for this is really true to form. At the conference, a 3D Lego Star Wars game was showed off which looked quite impressive.

Another example shown was what the Chrome Web Store can do for publishing. The editor of Sports Illustrated showed off partnered with the Wonder Factory a web-rich issue of SI, which has been shown off in the past with Adobe’s proprietary Air interactive publishing software. In contrast this new version was shown off in an  open HTML5 format, allowing the magazine to do more than just offer text and pictures but also video, games and interactivity that a paper version cannot compare to. This will also be great for eventual tablets that run a Google-based OS.

The Chrome Web Store will be heavily featured in Chrome OS, and will be coming to the Chrome browser development channel soon.

thechromesource Daily: Links for 5/4/10

Posted on 04. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Chrome 5 Beta has been updated; it now has a faster V8 engine, as well as new HTML5 features and overall improved performance.

PC World’s JR Raphael posits that the Google TV project will run a version of Android called Dragonpoint.

The Chromium Blog has a case study posted on how four different development teams created their Chrome Extensions.

Google recently invested $38 million dollars on two wind farms owned by NextEra Energy Resources.

Google’s stock has performed well since it went public, but can it get up to $2,000 per share?

UK Gmail users can rejoice – the @gmail.com domain will soon be available after a legal dispute of the name has been resolved.

Improve Your Workflow with the Split Screen Extension for Chrome

Posted on 07. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

It’s been said that you are able to be up to thirty percent more productive when you have two screens for your workstation. Unfortunately, due to the fact that many people have laptops or are experiencing some sort of expense constraints, often times only one screen is available. While this may not necessarily be the same as an extra screen, some developer out there took this as an opportunity and created the Split Screen Extension for the Chrome browser:

The split screen concept is pretty simple. In the upper right corner where most extensions reside there is a little  monitor icon. Click on it and you get a new tab that loads up two evenly split screens, allowing you to enter the URLs of your choice on each side. It even seems to remember the sites you’ve been to, so it is taking Chrome’s history data into account as well. Nice touch.

It might be a good idea for the developer to have an icon for the split screen tab so it can be recognized, as right now there is only a generic page that identifies the tab. It’s just a suggestion.

There isn’t much more to this extension – right-clicking on the extension icon gives you the option to disable it, uninstall and of course to open another split screen window. I can see several good uses for this extension: making comparisons, copying and pasting, reducing the amount of tabs as well as just being more productive overall by having more than one site open at the same time.

Overall, a useful extension. I recommend trying it in full screen for the best viewing experience. You can check out the Split Screen Extension for yourself right here.

Chrome Sounds Extension Uses HTML5 to Enhance Experience

Posted on 01. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

In fun jest as Google always does for April Fools, they have announced on the Chrome Blog the release of a Chrome Extension that will enhance a user’s audio experience while surfing the web:

“Taking an earful of inspiration from the HTML5 audio tag, we’ve spent the past few months deep in psychoacoustic models, the Whittaker-Nyquist-Kotelnikov-Shannon sampling theorem, Franssen effects, Shepard-Risset Tones, and 11.1 surround sound research to build a cutting-edge audio-driven user interface for our users, available through a new Chrome extension. With this extension, Chrome will provide audio feedback as you browse to web pages and interact with the browser”

I must say that the entire post “Unmuting the web with Google Chrome” sounds convincing if this were posted on any other day that April Fools. That is, save for the very last paragraph where they announce plans to also add support via an extension for the “olfactory experience” sometime in the future.

I installed the extension for the fun of it, and it certainly offers some audio, basically sound effects that make your Chrome browsing experience much more “musical”.

Concerned About Privacy? Scroogle Scrapes Your Searches

Posted on 24. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

It’s n0 joke that Google is everywhere – we hear this piece of information so often it’s beginning to become something that we no longer think about. There are some serious privacy issues that are presented when thinking of how much information Google collects in order to make a tidy profit, and most of us just assume that we can expect Google to make the best judgment about what to do with that information.

Enter Scroogle. If anything else, I guarantee you will find some entertainment by visiting this unique site. But its main purpose is to offer folks the ability to conduct searches without having any data sent back to Google. The way it works is pretty straightforward: the cookie that is assigned a unique identifier by Google is used once and then trashed by the Scroogle servers within an hour, and their logs are deleted within 48 hours. Therefore, Google gets a cookie that has some information, but has no real way to use it since it is used only once and then thrown away.

The site even offers instructions on how to make Scroogle the default search in whatever browser you use with their own SSL sever, claiming under the instructions for Chrome that it “phones home a lot”.

According to the site statistics, Scroogle is used quite a bit. It does over 300,000 scraped searches every day and is on a steady rise. It’s ranked as one of the top ten thousand sites on the web by Alexa, an impressive feat considering a search (non-Scroogled, by the way) for the site offered very little information on the site. There’s a Firefox add-in for Scroogle, but I suspect that we won’t be seeing an official Chrome Extension anytime soon. Give it a shot if you are concerned that Google or perhaps another organization such as your ISP is looking over your shoulder a bit too much.

Will ExtensionFM Allow You to Have a Music Library on the Web?

Posted on 21. Mar, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

There’s been a lot of buzz recently about ExtensionFM, and I understand why. Many people are concerned that with the migration from powerful computers that have large hard drives that they will not be able to have access to their music library. Well, there are some upstarts that are looking to solve this problem. One of them, called the Cloud Player I spent time writing about already. Now ExtensionFM is about to bring the musical experience on your computer (and the web) up a notch.

It’s pretty straightforward, basically as a Chrome add-on ExtensionFM allows you to bookmark web locations where music files are located. An application located on the web is there so that you can organize it. Here is a demo of how it works:

So this is all fine and good, but I do have one little problem with this. It’s still hard to get your favorite music directly from the web. Sure, if you listen exclusively to indie music, you’ll be just fine. But unfortunately I grew up in a time where music was distributed by record companies – and they are still making it hard for people to listen to music when they want, where they want unless they get their cut.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy Pandora, Jango and I also use Lala. But am I the only that feels feature-wise that they are a bit lacking? I like what ExtensionFM is trying to do, but until the model that the major record companies are still holding onto is completely dissolved, I’m not entirely sure that this is going to be all that successful.

Compounding this problem is that ExtensionFM isn’t even available to the public yet. It’s in an invitation-only beta. So you can sign up, but you won’t be able to download and install it until they want more people to try it.

So I guess I’ll have to wait until they email me. I’m still interested – but I’m skeptical.

Chrome Extensions Passes 3,000 Threshold

Posted on 27. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

In a bid to potentially undermine one of the main strengths of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, Chrome’s own version of the add-on is growing at a pretty good clip. That’s because the official Chrome Extensions count now is over three thousand different ones that you can install. This is pretty significant not just because it threatens Firefox’s dominance, but also the speed at which extensions developed for Chrome has grown in the past few months.

It was only in December that the extensions site was opened up for what was then Chrome 4 Beta, starting initially with a nascent 300 that were available, developed by both internal Googlers and outside developers.

Extensions are an easy way to customize Chrome. As an example, there are some good Twitter extensions as well as others that can help you keep your tabs organized or have a list of daily tasks to do right within the browser. This is all in an ongoing effort to make a majority of personal computing tasks located within the browser environment. I’ve previously written about some of the most interesting ones that I have found, but with so many coming out every day, there are probably some new ones that I need to check out.

With that being said, there are also some that don’t work very well, and can cause your browser to crash or just be plain annoying. Good thing its easy to uninstall them in that case. But at least with Chrome, extensions have some security features built in and need to be signed off by Google before they are allowed to be a part of their official directory.

Chrome 5 Has Google Translate Built In

Posted on 26. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

It looks like in the future, Chrome users will not need to have a Translate Extension in order to read sites that are in a foreign language. That’s because with Chrome 5, which is currently in beta, it is built into the latest developer version. I personally had installed the Google Translate feature from Google’s Extension site when I first downloaded Chrome 5, so I didn’t even realize this until I came across the info myself.

Now, when you are at a site that is in a different language than yours, Chrome 5 automatically detects that and asks you if you want to translate the page. It takes a few seconds, then you will be able to read the page in your language. Sometimes the translation isn’t perfect but I have yet to find a time when I cannot understand what I am reading.

Mind you it can only do text, not images or any craziness that may be embedded in Flash.

This feature acts exactly like the Translate Extension so much so that it make me wonder what else Google is planning on integrating into Chrome for future versions. This one was a good idea, as Translate isn’t really something that you notice until you are on a site you cannot read because it isn’t in your own language. One other thing: there doesn’t appear to be a way to turn Translate off as of yet but you can set a site to not notify for translation from the options menu located on the right hand side:

In a nutshell Translate is a useful, transparent feature that has been baked into this version of Chrome. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we keep seeing Google add more of their applications and services directly into the browser if they feel it is of utmost use and convenience.

While this may make it into a future Chrome 4 update, to use this now you must be on the current Dev Channel. This is the most recent Chrome version that is available and is ahead of the monthly beta updates that Google pushes out. You can download Chrome 5 Dev for all platforms right here.

Mac Users Can Now Enjoy Bookmark Sync, Extensions in Chrome

Posted on 11. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Google has announced today that the Chrome Beta 5 browser for Mac now has support for Bookmark Sync and Extensions. Bookmark Sync allows users to have access to their bookmarks from whatever computer they can access their Google account from. Extensions are small applications that allow for additional functionality mo found in the standard release of the browser application, and are created by independent developers outside of Google.

You can check out the official directory for Google Extensions right here. With thousands of extensions already available, it can be a bit overwhelming to decide which ones to install without feeling like you are overloading your browser with bloat. If you’re interested, I have written an article about some useful extensions you might be interested in trying out that I have found to be useful to my browsing experience.

The task manager has also been integrated into this new version. Since tabs in Chrome are running as separate processes, this can be helpful in casa a page or application within the tab becomes unstable and/or is buggy. There also now is Cookie Manager in Tools as well.

Google has posted a video for users who are interested in trying out the browser for themselves:

For users who already have Chrome – don’t worry about updating, as the browser will do so itself. You can always go to your tools menu (wrench icon) and go to About Google Chrome to see if you have the latest beta release, which is 5.0.307. Remember, this is for beta users of Chrome 5, not the stable release of Chrome 4.

You can get Chrome 5 Beta here if you don’t have it already. Users who are interested in checking out the entire release information put out by Google themselves can check out the entire post right here.

Video: A Look at the UI Concepts for Chrome and its Extensions

Posted on 10. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey.

Extensions that now run in Chrome browser could easily be labeled as applications themselves, and in the near future I’m pretty sure that’s what they will be. It will be especially true when you consider that Chrome OS will run next to every program for users native to the browser itself. With applications really being the focus of an operating system, it’s important that all the parts work together right and give an experience that a user wants to come back to. Although making a device work is part of the goal,  speed and simplicity help in terms of making a better UI than what is currently available:

As the clip also talks about, customization for users is also going to be key. For example, you can create extensions that provide HTML-based popups, yet do not create another tab in the main screen which could seem obtrusive. Towards the end of the video there is an example of what is really exciting about having extensions and people developing interesting new apps for this platform because of the potential to make more interactive content.

There are a lot of offical Google resources out there for getting started developing an extension. The best part about learning about this early is that an extension for the browser will be able to be used in the operating system when it is released.