Chrome browser extensions: a quick look

Update: Lance Corrimal has produced a set of search helpers for Firefox, which I’ve reviewed as well.

Daniel Voyager brings word that the Chrome browser offers a number of user-made extensions for Second Life. In particular, he points to three which appear to have value. As a sometimes-Chrome user (I tend to switch between it and Firefox on Windows, depending on what each new release brings), I decided to take a bit of a closer look at them. All three were located by searching for “Second Life” in the Chrome extensions web store.

Second Life Friends

This is described as an extension which, “Shows a list of friends online when logged into the SL website” and that “Users can check if their friends are online from any web page, instead of having to go through the tricky Second Life dashboard.”

The extension adds a Second Life icon to the browser, and I assume clicking on it is intended to display a list of friends online when you are logged-in to the SL website (although not necessarily with the web dashboard page open). However, the last update for the extension is 2010, and I was unable to get it to work.

Second Life Marketplace Helper

Apparently last updated in January 2013, this extension is supposed to make browsing your SL Marketplace favourites easier. Installing it does two things:

• Adds a Second Life icon to the browser’s address bar when using the Marketplace
• Add a new link to the right side of Marketplace product pages, “Add to Favourite Shop” (note this is not the same as the LL-supplied “Add to Favourites” link, which appears further down the product page).

I gather the idea is to click on the “Add to Favourite Shop” to add an item to a “Favourite Shop” list which can be opened using the icon in the address bar. However, I was (again) unable to get anything to work, although it did not, as the one review of the extension suggested, “make the Marketplace unavailable”.

Chrome Life

This is the one extension I did get to work. It adds a Second Life icon to the Chrome tool bar which, when you are logged-in to the SL website (regardless of whether you have your SL web dashboard page open in the browser or not) will display the number of your friends currently on-line. Additionally, as friends log-in to SL, a pop-up will briefly appear in the bottom right corner of your screen announcing the fact they have.

Clicking on the icon itself will display a list of all your friends currently on-line, and if any have given you permission to map them, hovering the mouse over the globe which appears alongside their name will display a hovertip of their location.

When clicked, the icon also displays a note of your current L$ balance and a list fo your Groups. The extension is also configurable in terms of what is displayed via the Options link in your browser Extensions page.

Feedback

I assume the reason why Second Life Friends isn’t working is because it has not been updated in a good while and may no longer be displayed. Quite why the Marketplace Helper doesn’t appear to work, I’ve no idea. Chrome Life appears handy if you need to keep tabs on specific friends and want to see when they go in-world without having to keep the SL web dashboard open in a browser tab. I’m not sure I’d want to use the extension all the time myself (I actually removed it after playing with it through my Crash Test Alt), but for the SL-addicted it could prove useful :).

Obviously, these are third-party extensions, so the usual warnings about them not in any way being associated with Linden Lab or Second Life and using at your own risk, etc., apply.

With thanks to Daniel Voyager