Google Chrome browser needs no new introduction and part of the popularity comes from the wide range of Chrome extensions available through the Chrome Web Store allowing users to customize their Chrome experience.
However, Google on its Chromium blog says that they have been receiving large volumes of complaints from users about unwanted extensions causing undesirable changes in the user experience, most of the extensions are available through inline installation on websites. Going back in time, Inline installations were introduced in Google Chrome 15 in 2011, this allows an easy and intuitive way to install extensions.
Prior to this change, users had to go back to Chrome Store, install the plugin and comeback, instead, they could simply click the install button for an extension hosted on the Chrome Web Store, all without leaving the webpage. However, this negates the user to know more about the plugins and how to use them and ultimately seen a rise in user complaints and extensions were more likely to be uninstalled.
With that in mind, Google now has decided to retire inline installations on all platforms. Users will now only be able to install extensions from within the Google Chrome Web Store, where they can view all information about an extension’s functionality prior to installation.
The change will roll out in three phases; inline installation will be unavailable to all newly published extensions from today, extensions first published on June 12, 2018, or later that attempt to call the chrome.webstore.install() function will automatically redirect the user to the Google Chrome Web Store in a new tab to complete the installation.
On September 12th, inline installation will be disabled for existing extensions, and users will be automatically redirected to the Chrome Web Store to complete the installation and in early December 2018, the inline install API method will be removed from Chrome 71. Website developers who rely on inline installation will need to update the install buttons on their website to link to their extension’s Chrome Web Store prior to the stable release of Chrome 71.