Prevent my extension from being listed on the Chrome Web Store?

[dsuwirya]

Hello,

I'm trying to make my extension that's just been submitted to store to become 'hidden', in the sense that I don't want to receive any user feedback, I don't want the extension to be searchable / listed in the store, but still accessible and installable through the inline-install or update_url registry approach.

In the following page https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/extensions-deployment-faq, it's mentioned the following :

What if I want to restrict access to certain users or prevent my extension from being listed on the Chrome Web Store?

You can restrict access to your extension by limiting its visibility to Trusted Tester or by unlisting the extension from the Chrome Web Store.

Does 'unlisting' there means exactly the 'Unpublish' button that I see in the developer dashboard page ? 

Will the extension be accessible / installable through the inline-install or update_url registry approach after I unpublish it ?

If yes, then :

- will the inline-install dialog still shows the star icons and View Details link ?

- what will happen if I click 'View Details' on that inline-install dialog ?

- will it still show the detailed extension info page from the store, with feedback tab that users can input something on it ?

Thank You.

[Antony Sargent]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 2:48 PM, dsuwirya <dsuw...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

I'm trying to make my extension that's just been submitted to store to become 'hidden', in the sense that I don't want to receive any user feedback, I don't want the extension to be searchable / listed in the store, but still accessible and installable through the inline-install or update_url registry approach.

In the following page https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/developers/extensions-deployment-faq, it's mentioned the following :

What if I want to restrict access to certain users or prevent my extension from being listed on the Chrome Web Store?

You can restrict access to your extension by limiting its visibility to Trusted Tester or by unlisting the extension from the Chrome Web Store.

Does 'unlisting' there means exactly the 'Unpublish' button that I see in the developer dashboard page ? 

No, there is a separate section at the bottom of the publish page that lets you select various options. They are named something similar to "only to people with the link" or "show only to trusted testers or people with the link" (can't remember exact wording off the top of my head). 

 

Will the extension be accessible / installable through the inline-install or update_url registry approach after I unpublish it ?

If yes, then :

- will the inline-install dialog still shows the star icons and View Details link ?

- what will happen if I click 'View Details' on that inline-install dialog ?

- will it still show the detailed extension info page from the store, with feedback tab that users can input something on it ?

Thank You.

The update_url registry based approach should still work for hidden items. I don't know if inline install is still supported or not for hidden items. 

 

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[Rajesh Katalkar]

Antony can you get it confirmed whether inline can work with people with link because we are planning to use it.

Also it would be good if it work for testers also.

Also can you skip review for extensions published for tester only and directly publish it even if inline is selected etc...and review only when its published to public etc.This way your time will also be saved and our time will also be saved as we can also keep testing and fixing issue before we feel its good to publish to all.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/CALwaUNKdgmcmTBdEN5q3vK8TSEnPfHACcdM4hzBj6%3DykuaSFfg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Antony Sargent]

I've reached out internally to the folks on the webstore team, and will respond back when I hear from them. 

[Antony Sargent]

Ok, the word from the webstore folks is that if you choose the "People with the link" visibility option, your extension will not appear in the webstore search results, but inline install should work for anyone. 

On Thu, Mar 6, 2014 at 8:50 AM, Antony Sargent <asar...@chromium.org> wrote:

I've reached out internally to the folks on the webstore team, and will respond back when I hear from them. 

On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 4:49 PM, Rajesh Katalkar <rajesh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Antony can you get it confirmed whether inline can work with people with link because we are planning to use it.

Also it would be good if it work for testers also.

Also can you skip review for extensions published for tester only and directly publish it even if inline is selected etc...and review only when its published to public etc.This way your time will also be saved and our time will also be saved as we can also keep testing and fixing issue before we feel its good to publish to all.

Re: skipping review, I don't think that's something we could do in this case because the item is still publicly available. We have talked in the past about adding some sort of limited "publish for QA" mode or something that could possibly delay doing the review checks until a final public publishing step, but that doesn't exist today. For now your best bet is to use the "load unpacked extension" feature of developer mode in chrome://extensions. 

[Rajesh Katalkar]

Antony,

            Thanks for the update.I hope the same applies to testers also and inline will work for them also.

Now regarding review skipping when published for testers.

Now there is going to be more test cases.Its not just extension testing .we need to test it from users point of view.

1) The information that the user will see when he goes in store..it's localization etc

2) Download the extension from store its working good or not

3) when inline used whether its working good or not.

can you clarify that how can the item be still be publicly available when I am publishing for trusted testers only.Are you saying that they can see the extension? But they should not be able to install it because only testers should be able to install it as per my understanding.So this should be harmless.

[Antony Sargent]

Right now publishing to trusted testers just controls who can see the details page on the webstore and do installs from there, but does not apply to inline install which happens from a 3rd party website. We've been working on supporting authentication for the actual download of crx files at install/autoupdate time, but there is still some work on the webstore side to plumb that all the way through. 

For background, see:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=320906

https://codereview.chromium.org/129873019/

[Rajesh Katalkar]

Antony,

           From this I understand that you cannot skip review for inline supported extensions for now.But you can still skip it for extensions not supporting inline that are published to testers till the time your inline work is not done.

           Because I have uploaded the extension but holding its publishing because we need to gather localized info and also our marketing team working on putting promotional images that's already supported in store.Plus we are also going to support inline.

I have some data already ready for small test.But I am holding the publish because even publishing without inline for tester puts it in review process which can take much time even if it says 60min as I seen people complaining about.Even making small changes put's it in review again.I just want to start without inline for now ,published to trusted tester's without review.If this works at atleast we can give a first look to our customer and make quick changes if needed.

FYI your first link gives Forbidden error

[Antony Sargent]

Oh sorry, the bug I linked to is restricted - there may be some details there that someone had not intended to be public. 

Anyhow, my guess is that in general there is little appetite on the webstore team for adding mechanisms to completely skip the review process since we see so many attackers looking for loopholes in the system. But what might be a better use of their time would be trying to reduce the time it takes for the outlier cases in reviews - right now the vast majority of uploads get reviewed very quickly but the ones that get flagged for further follow up fall into a queue that currently takes way too long.