1. create a new shortcut by right clicking inside a folder (like desktop or documents) followed by choosing: new > shortcut
2. use the following string on the location field: “%appdata%\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --app=https://mail.google.com/mail”
3. after the shortcut was created, change the icon for shortcut by right clicking on it and choosing properties > change icon (i have downloaded the gmail icon from http://iconexpo.com/2009/02/free-gmail-icon-new-version)
4. drag the shortcut to the taskbar in order to pin it
5. click on it, it will first open a new task on task bar but after gmail loads it will merge to the one you have already pinned (which is separated for the normal chrome task on the taskbar)

actually it is very simple, you make a new direcotry, and create ‘manifest.json’ description file, it includes all of the extension official stuff, like name, version, description and permissions. it also include pointers to other files – html and javascripts.

that’s it, from here it is plain web: html/css and javascript.

one thing worth mentioning is that if you change the manifest file you need to explicitly reload your extension on your chrome://extensions/ page, otherwise things like permissions are not updated. other stuff like html/javascript files are reloaded each time you invoke your extension, so no need to do nothing on this case.

what i was working on? well, long time ago i have found out that the old school method of cataloging things and then searching them by their location is not very effective, you pay a lot of time on the WRITE side and you pay as well on the READ side, using metaphor from the database world.

the search capability of everything and sublime text projects are far better, just see all the database as one flat list and start filtering it by your search term. so that what i did on my bookmarks, and here is the result:

everymark – ‘everything’ search on my bookmark.

when clicking the icon, a nice popup will appear, populated with a list of all your bookmarks and their links, whenever you start typing search terms the list will shrink to contain only the relevant bookmarks – neat – any way enjoy.

btw, for references about writing the extension i have use the following pages:

http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/devguide.html
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/api_index.html
http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/tut_debugging.html

* * *

revisions:

1. javascript snippets which functions like an add-on, can be found here. you have there adblock, linkfy and more.
2. i use linksys WRT54G and i couldn’t access it with chrome since on login the user name is left empty. i just managed to pass this after entering a space as the user name, with the right password of course
3.  last thing is about monospace font on chrome (and firefox as well) is that it look to me too small. i don’t know why i didn’t do it so far, but i just changed it’s size from 13 to 14.

sure, i can live without few of them, but adblock and bookmark sync are must. luckily i was glad to see there is a nice solution for the adblock, see http://stevenpratt.com/2008/09/06/google-chrome-adblock-plugin

by the way, if google don’t want to loose their adsense business with their own browser, they should supply or support an adblock plugin. because the solution above remove all ads from the page, while the firefox plugin is more delicate and customizable, which allows the user to disable only irritating ads.

overall, the browser is very fast, and quite nice actually. it is nice to see companies and groups bold enough to enter into a very saturated area, and change the rules. that what microsoft did with internet explorer 3 and above to netscape (who remember them today?), that what firefox did to ie, and now it is interesting to see a true change to this whole field of browsers.

a great page presenting some of the tweaks availble for google chrome can be found here.

on less functional level, one can ask himself, where does it go. well, staying on the technological level, rahter on the theological, i read a lot on the web about the cloud computing. an article by Steve Balmer, another opinion about google chrome and android, just search for ‘cloud google chrome‘ and there are plentty of them.

each and his own imagination, i just hope we will not wake up from a dream of open source, free applications, into an admition fee based server-barred-services reality.