Downloader: Chrome Extensions Gallery finally gets categories! Well, 6 anyway...

Friday, May 21, 2010

Chrome Extensions Gallery finally gets categories! Well, 6 anyway...

I've griped about the Chrome Extensions Gallery before. It's a cluttered mess, and finding extensions is much more of a pain in the ass than it should be. Yes, I can search and look at featured and popular extensions, but where are the tags? Where are the categories? Where are the suggestions of similar or related extensions I might want to try? You know, like the way the Firefox add-ons site is set up.

If you check the Gallery now, Google is finally taking baby steps toward making things less craptacular. Beneath the Featured link, there are now six sub-categories: web development, shopping, sports, fun, and by Google. They're not all inclusive, but instead are curated lists -- which I'm guessing include extensions which are either popular or were previously recommended by Google.

The by Google category is certainly welcome, though I already had a bookmark to search for "(by Google)" -not which does pretty much the same thing.

At any rate, Google's Koh Kim seems pretty excited about the change, and at least it's something... Who knows, maybe now they'll get to work on some more additions. And maybe they'll start enforcing that "your extension has to have a screenshot" rule...