What are some good ways to notify users in case of emergencies?

[Jackie Han]

Chrome 145 has a bug that affects all extensions that use the tabGroup API. This bug is clearly visible to users.

Although the bug has been quickly fixed, it won't be pushed to users until the next Chrome version, Chrome 146. Users will be unable to use the extension properly for a month. What's a good way to let users know about this?

What can I do?

• update CWS listing description: This needs to be reviewed
• release a new version, popup a page to tell users: This needs to be reviewed
• write a review myself to tell users: This don't need to be reviewed

Can CWS do something about this? For example

• Could CWS provide developers with a customizable bulletin board for announcing urgent or important matters?
• Could Chrome or CWS notify users, for a period of time, via some UI that a certain extension might not be working properly due to a Chrome bug?

Jackie Han

[Jackie Han]

Many social networking sites allow authors to pin one or more comments, which can act as notifications. For example, on YouTube, an author can pin a comment (such as a comment they wrote) to get users' attention. Similarly, if CWS also provides this feature, then developers can let users see announcements.

[al]

I feel like there was a WECG issue discussing something similar, where the NTP could host notifications from extensions. (I don't mean via the notifications API)

From memory the vendor sentiment wasn neutral to negative, though could be wrong. 

One method could be for the ext to check some sever endpoint for alerts, then display them (on any page I guess).

Obviously though that doesn't work for every extension.

On the vendor side, perhaps if the extensions page had another side menu item, under "Keyboard Shortcuts" that hosted what you're talking about. 

It could show a very neutral colour indicator (akin to mobile app badges) if there's some alert.

In my opinion, that will be misused immediately, not only by bad actors, but probably by commercial publishers.

So maybe if it was ASCII text only (not rich) and restricted, e.g. 1 item at any time, no way to know if dismissed by user. 

I think your problem should be addressed, imo.