Blog Posts

Sunday, July 19, 2015

SimpleExtManager 1.4.3.11

Adding in 2 features, making it easier to do 2 things users want but Google don't allow and fixing plus tweaking things that didn't occur to me in the last round of coding.
  • Added show bottom tabs at the top
  • Added only allow one enabled group
  • Added "Manage" item in right-click menu
  • Fixed extension count not refreshing while popup open
  • More accurate group state by omitting "not installed" extensions
  • Make it that SEM cannot be added to groups
  • New translations: Arabic and Serbian
  • Opera improvements
  • Other misc tweaks and fixes
Opera version coming once moderation process is finished.

More details after the jump.

New features

Bottom tabs at the top: A suggestion by a user 刘勤志 citing that it reduces mouse movement.

Only allow one enabled group: Suggested by user Tom Lahey, implemented it based on my understanding. With this feature on when a group is enabled it will first disable all groups then enable just the extensions of that group you selected. NOTE: If theres an overlap, meaning if an extension is in two groups, then both groups will be affected. That just how it works.


No API so this is that next best

Theres been quite a lot of request for adding an option for show/hide button and allow operation in incognito mode. I have to say that these 2 functions cannot be done now as Google doesn't have any API methods exposed for the developers to use to set these 2 options.

So the next best thing is to make it easier. Thats where the "Manage" right-click menu item comes in. Clicking on it brings the user to the chrome://extensions page with the selected extension highlighted, a shortcut to those 2 settings.


Changes concerning group state

The group state is set by the number of enabled extensions in the group. A group has 3 states: Enabled, partly enabled and disabled.

Omitting "not installed" extensions: "Not installed" extensions come from restoring backup files which contains groups that contain extensions not installed on that machine. The calculation of group state used to take those in consideration as well thus producing more partly enabled groups as "not installed" extensions count as disabled. Omitting "not installed" extensions thus makes group states more accurate.

No SEM allowed in groups: It doesn't make sense to me for the extension itself to be easily disabled, like when you are happily disabling groups and hit one with SEM thing come to a sudden stop and you scamper to menu then extensions and enabled SEM to continue - not a good experience to me. Also if it is always enabled it would affect group states if its in many groups. So its been made to remove SEM from all current groups and not allow SEM to be included in groups.


Translations

Thanks to Rayan.a for the Arabic translations and aoteapolaris for the Serbian translations.


Opera improvements

Fixed bottom tabs right-click menus not showing: Noticed that it wasn't working so went to fix it.

Alternate sidebar button: The Opera sidebar API has similar methods so I put those to use.


Misc tweaks and fixes

Tried optimizing the for-loops by caching the breaking condition, they say it doesn't do much for Chrome but I did it anyway. Did so as theres lots of for-loops as I've added checks to determine if the extension is installed in a few more methods to prevent any null errors. Allowing "not installed" extensions burden SEM quite a bit I feel.

Also made it so that the overwrite dialog don't appear when saving edited groups. This was brought up by Jesse Gilbride.

Probably theres more that I forgotten.

4 comments:

  1. "Get more extensions" in Serbian links to https://addons.opera.com/en/sr/extensions/ which is 404.
    Problems with not displaying the whole text in Disable All button (also in Serbian). See: http://i.imgur.com/2bLW4lG.png
    A little confused with "Bottom tabs on top". If they are on top, they are not bottom.:) Maybe it is better "Show tabs" and "Tabs on top".

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for reporting!
      Will look into those soon.

      Do you know Serbian?
      Do you know if there is a shorter phrase that has the "Disable All" meaning?
      Otherwise I will just leave that as it is.
      Don't want to change width for a language as I feel that checking for a special case slows down the workings a bit.

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    2. Yes, it's my native. Cyrillic letters are so wide. :)

      Delete
    3. I can't find a shorter phrase, it will be just "Disable" meaning.

      Delete