Well I feel like an idiot, as the commenter below pointed out, the link I mentioned was a bookmark itself, not a “get bookmark plugins” link, but it was showing up in my list of bookmarks, which means that, as the commenter said, this bookmark had been imported from Firefox, and was not actually an indication that Google Chrome was intending to support Firefox Extensions.
The truth of the matter is I was so surprised to find the link, that I didn’t think about logical reasons why that link might have been there. I spun up a fresh copy of Windows on VMWare after the commenter posted, and did an installation of Google Chrome where Firefox had never existed. The link I mentioned below did not exist, which means the commenter was right, it did indeed come from an import of Firefox bookmarks. I’m big enough to admit that I’m wrong.
For archival purposes, my original, incorrect, blog post is after the break. My review of the things I like about Chrome still stands, although my foolish thought that Chrome will support Firefox extensions does not.
A lot of people are complaining that Firefox Extensions do not work in Google Chrome, and why would they, they are Firefox extensions, not Google Chrome extensions. The Firefox Extensions are not built to be compatible with Webkit, which Google Chrome is based on.
But what a lot of people seem to be missing is that on the new tab page/home page screen there’s a link that reads Get Bookmark Add-ons. When you click this link you are taken… to the Firefox Add-on site to find Bookmark Firefox Extensions. This seems to me to indicate that Google is planning on supporting Firefox plugins, why else would they link there.
Google Chrome is nice, it has some of the features I’ve long liked in Safari (like dragging a tab out of a window to keep work flow better) and a great UI. I’m also fond of the syntax hilighting in the address bar that shows you different parts of the URL, and the integrated searching is fast and easy to use. I’m also intrigued by the concept of separating each tab into it’s own little process world. It makes sense in some ways, but I’m always leery of having lots of processes running.
I’m fully ok with the fact that Chrome doesn’t yet have extensions, I expect they are coming real soon down the pipe, my only gripe is that Chrome is WebKit based, but it’s not yet available for Mac! Come on Google, Mac Users are notorious WebKit fanatics, let us play on our turf.