Category: GNOME Shell integration for Chrome

GNOME Shell integration for Chrome version 8 with Firefox support released

About GNOME Shell integration for Chrome

Browser extension for Google Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, Vivaldi, Opera (and other Browser Extension, Chrome Extension or WebExtensions capable browsers) and native host messaging connector that provides integration with GNOME Shell and the corresponding extensions repository https://extensions.gnome.org.

Changes

  • Added Mozilla Firefox support (Firefox addons site). Native host connector version 8 or newer required.
  • Added support for asynchronous browser API to extensions.gnome.org and switched chrome-gnome-shell to using such API. Review pages are works well now when browser extension is enabled.
  • Moved update check code to native connector to be able to get verbose error messages when update check is failed. Python Requests 2 required now.
  • Implemented notifications support in native connector. This will unify notifications for all supported browsers. As part of this change native connector rewritten as GApplication with DBus activation. DBus support is required now.

Updated translations

  • Czech (Marek Černocký)
  • Dutch (Hannie Dumoleyn)
  • French (Alexandre Franke)
  • Italian (Gianvito Cavasoli)
  • Polish (Piotr Drąg)
  • Portuguese (Brazil) (Rafael Fontenelle)
  • Spanish (Daniel Mustieles)
  • Swedish (Anders Jonsson, Josef Andersson)
  • Turkish (Muhammet Kara)

Known issues

  • Native host connector is not working in Google Chrome and Opera when installed via Debian Stretch or Sid repositories. To know “why?” look
    here, here and here. For a workaround look here.
  • Web extension is broken on FreeBSD because of bug 212925.

Links

FTP: https://download.gnome.org/sources/chrome-gnome-shell/8/chrome-gnome-shell-8.tar.xz
Git: https://git.gnome.org/browse/chrome-gnome-shell/
Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShellIntegrationForChrome
Installation Guide: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShellIntegrationForChrome/Installation
Chrome Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gnome-shell-integration/gphhapmejobijbbhgpjhcjognlahblep
Firefox Addons: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/gnome-shell-integration/
Opera Addons: https://addons.opera.com/extensions/details/gnome-shell-integration/

How to install GNOME Shell extensions with Firefox 52?

As many of you may know already Mozilla is dropping NPAPI support from Firefox. This change was announced more than an year ago and finally all NPAPI plugins except Adobe Flash are banned in nightly Firefox builds.

Firefox 52 will be first version with GNOME Shell integration NPAPI plugin hard disabled.

For those who still want to use Firefox for managing GNOME Shell extensions there is NPAPI plugin replacement ready: GNOME Shell integration for Chrome (chrome-gnome-shell).

You should not be confused by it’s name because chrome-gnome-shell supports all major browsers: Google Chrome/Chromium, Vivaldi, Opera and Firefox.

The words “for Chrome” in project’s name means “for Chrome extensions capable browsers” and recent versions of Firefox supports own implementation of “Chrome extensions API“: WebExtensions.

Currently, Firefox supported only in git master branch of chrome-gnome-shell, however first chrome-gnome-shell’s release with Firefox support will be published on Jan 4, 2017 and will have version 8.

Unlike NPAPI plugin chrome-gnome-shell consists of 2 parts: browser extension and helper application written in Python: native host messaging connector.

Firefox extension can be installed from addons.mozilla.org.
As for native host connector – it should be installed separately, preferably using your distro’s package manager. Currently, packages are prepared for Arch, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu. Packages with Firefox support will be available shortly after Jan 4, 2017.

Have problems with or questions about chrome-gnome-shell? Look to the chrome-gnome-shell’s wiki page.
Feel free to ping me on irc (my nickname is nE0sIghT on GIMPNet) or fill new ticket at Github or at bugzilla.gnome.org.

 

Update:

GNOME Shell integration for Chrome version 8 with Firefox support released