Asset rejection notification for images

[Andrew Grosset]

Received an email last week notifying me that text in images was illegible etc., so I uploaded improved images and this morning I got 2 more emails 6 hrs. apart repeating that the images were illegible etc.

So I go to the support page and...

Please enter the violation reference ID mentioned in the email sent to you. The ID consists of 2 parts - a colour and an element from the periodic table. For example, "Blue Copper".

There is nothing in any of the 3 emails that shows this weird new security ID consisting of a "color" and an element from the periodic table so it is impossible to submit to the Chrome Web Store One Stop Support.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/WzYrjMOIsDlJQBGKBbOqkMREtH0VxtY5Lh-a60soyie6hbp6CrWfAiHccK-5RXGUp2aaCY8EX249GBxY1UgT5bt2CQ

• The text on the asset is too small
• The image in the asset is blurry or distorted

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/chJI7FwGugjAr_rkjr5HooIWWxaad19zZptZZNEw80QnymXteWd2_msD3rexpIjhrqMy2IcDYQXUFiwkORtPm3O4TQ

• The text on the asset is too small

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/OmW-5dH4KPT9RmWYARVNe7AE396nPqB0wF6xir3u3zmAreOFhxLlg1YQOPBc90nD1tEig9RGH6DcXrkmyQt7vph7bw

• • The asset has too much text or detail, which makes it difficult to read and understand for the end users
  • The text on the asset is too small

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/PAwYIs6Zuo-SY0ndQ_dA1uTPPXJEyTiBk_i3vShgCWEj05wLe7wAMPSuvgFZb1TOYTgNESFwom9HyXTND1EmFT-0MQ

• • The text on the asset is too small
  • The asset has too much text or detail, which makes it difficult to read and understand for the end users

Extension ID: bbbgdjdihpieibjlcmacacoljegmfkbc

All the images are 640*400 jpeg at 100% quality, Screenshots are by nature slightly blurry and some of these images show encrypted text, but they are all readable unless you are blind.

If I could submit to the support page I wouldn't need to post on this forum, Can someone at Google fix this?

[Simeon Velichkov]

I have a similar issue and I'm just hoping that this is not an automated algorithm that decides on which screenshots are eligible or not. Not all browser extensions are about displaying emojis, quite a few of them are productivity tools that have nothing else to showcase other than their actual UI which consists of a lot of text. Also having the ability to zoom in those screenshots could help with the UX, but that's something that is missing ever since 2012 at least as far as I can remember. I'm sure there is a good reason for it, but I'm just saying.

[apell...@copper.com]

I have tried uploading pristine, crisp PNG assets at exactly the dimensions and format listed in the developer dashboard.

The upload flow immediately converted these assets to larger, more blurry images. For example a 56kb PNG with all text legible became a 59kb JPG with blurry text.

These asset rejection notifications are not due to user error; they are a bug in the Chrome Web Store code. Users do not have any control over receiving this error or not.

This bug is costing Google money (hosting larger files) and time (influx of support tickets) and reducing the quality of developer experience. I think Google should disable their blurry asset scanner and rescind the asset rejection notices, until the Chrome Web Store team fixes these bugs.

[Simeon Velichkov]

And the assets of my other extension got flagged too. Note that this is a markdown viewer so naturally I posted screenshots on what the extension produces as output, which as you may have guessed consists of a bunch of text rendered as HTML.

So with this 'new' asset flagging system I can no longer showcase my product. The most helpful things for anyone browsing that listing would be to quickly scroll through the screenshots and see how the rendered HTML looks like.

Maybe I can put an image of a unicorn and hope the users will believe me that it is not a scam .. at least it will make that ML bot happy.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

God, I got the same message! I am a very patient person, but I swear this is outrageous!

After years of begging Google to stop mocking our images, are they emailing us that they look blurry?

God google! You made them blurry. You are suggesting that we upload 1280x800 images to us and then compress them to a terrible quality of 640x400 and show them to people on retina screens.

Guys from Google, comment on the situation, please.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

Today I got a shock. Usually, when a discussion of bad screenshots starts, someone will suggest that Google is afraid to waste disk space to store high-quality screenshots. Of course, this is unlikely, but there are usually no other ideas.

But today, I discovered that Google stores images in high resolution 🤯😱 I just changed the link parameters and got a good-quality screenshot, which is quite suitable for display but retina screens.

Are we just dealing with a front-end bug all this time?

Link examples:
x1 - https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/izEjiBLTvVhHYCuiteQW5Z7RuIEbh4qqegwGvC6yuDn-N4tPXNGQUpmwrOgqui_n794BFc9mODY1a8sR0BYoOnlEtg=w640-h400-e365-rj-sc0x00ffffff
x2 - https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/izEjiBLTvVhHYCuiteQW5Z7RuIEbh4qqegwGvC6yuDn-N4tPXNGQUpmwrOgqui_n794BFc9mODY1a8sR0BYoOnlEtg=w1280-h800-e365-rj-sc0x00ffffff

I hope that Simeon or someone else from the Google team will help us find a solution.

By the way, I filed an appeal with Google. I'm waiting for an answer.

[Z Yin]

I got the same email today. I'm also showing actual screenshots of the extension in action, which contains a lot of text because the website does. I won't repeat how ridiculous this is because enough has been said in replies above. I just hope they won't take down my extension and won't reject my submissions of new versions of the code. The email says "What happens now: Your item will continue to be hosted on the Chrome Web Store, however its prominence will be reduced until the corrected graphic assets are submitted and approved." That seems fine with me, because nowadays I don't think any user would intentionally browse and search inside the chrome web store. As long as my SEO at google.com won't get affected it's ok, but will it??

[Simeon Velichkov]

Hey, can you share with us how to file an appeal with Google? Because as mentioned in other threads using the https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/contact/one_stop_support form is not very useful in case you don't have a rejection code and color for the asset rejection type in particular.

I want to file an appeal because there is really nothing I can do about fixing those screenshots as those are showcasing a markdown rendered as HTML .. Also besides the `The image in the asset is blurry or distorted` rejection reason mentioned earlier, I'm also flagged with the `The text on the asset is too small` as well, and it gives me a link to an image that is 512 × 320 pixels .. ? Surely if you resize a 1920p image down to 512px the text will be a bit hard to see. I really don't know what are we trying to prove with this exercise. And I cannot really show a rendered page without, ahem, showing the page, so I have to completely fake the showcase of my product.

As for the 'reduced prominence' it's a bit early to tell how it will affect my user base as both of my extension got flagged just a few days ago, but I will post some stats here once I have them.

[Simeon Velichkov]

Excuse me for the spam, but here is something that just came into my mind .. 

Why are these even labeled as Screenshots in the developer dashboard if my Screenshots are then going to be rejected of being too hard to read on a 512px screen, maybe? Even my computer more than 22 years ago had a 800x600 resolution. Lets call them something else and just acknowledge that we can no longer upload actual screenshots.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

👋

Use https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/contact/one_stop_support and choice "Something else (general support)".

[Simeon Velichkov]

I got an answer to my inquiry from the support team. 

That guy assured me that screenshots are being reviewed by people, and not machines. Also, he suggests this:

> Currently, all screenshots are downscaled to 640x400 pixels. If your screenshots do not look good when downscaled (for example, they have a lot of text), then I suggest you upload 640x400 screenshots natively. This way they do not get compressed.

Besides that he was also willing to share my feedback about the need of having larger screenshots on the Chrome Web Store for extensions like mine. Nothing was said about the reduced prominence though.

[Jackie Han]

I've expressed the idea in the past that the extension store should support better resolution images.
https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/issues/240
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/obZ9t7b8hPk/m/DwQ7m6jSAAAJ

At least, CWS could use responsive images instead of forcible downsize images. For example

<picture>
  <source srcset="large.png 1x" media="(min-width: 75em)">
  <source srcset="medium.png 1x, large.png 2x" media="(min-width: 40em)">
  <img src="small.png" alt="A description of the image." width="300" height="200" loading="lazy" decoding="async"
    srcset="small.png 1x, medium.png 2x, large.png 3x">
</picture>

Example code from https://web.dev/learn/design/picture-element/

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[Simeon Velichkov]

That would be great.

My main issue with the current suggestion of submitting 640x400 pixel 'screenshots' is that I cannot show anything useful in that amount of space for my extension in particular. Even if I resize my 1280x800 pixel native resolution PNG screenshots down to 640x400, using the default interpolation method in my editor which is cubic, and submit that instead, the only benefit that I would get is that they won't end up being as blurred, because they won't get compressed as well (to JPG maybe). But the text is still going to be 'too small' because again I am trying to display a rich HTML output with lots of elements in it that I cannot possibly fit into a native resolution of 640x400 pixels. And that output is the competitive edge of that product ..

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

I just got the same complaint about my extension https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/button-for-google-calenda/lfjnmopldodmmdhddmeacgjnjeakjpki

I do not understand. Google wants me to upload a black rectangle.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

@Simeon, what's happening? 🤯

[Z Yin]

@yank...@manganum.app

You screenshot looks great to me, it doesn't even have small texts.

[Jackie Han]

I think it is impossible to keep text clear after downscaling an image if font-size is not very large. If the font-size is very large, it can't be a full screenshot. Lots of screenshots on the Chrome Web Store are blurry text in 640 x 400 size.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

It seems to me that compression is only a small part of the problem.

We are discussing in December 2022 the display of bitmaps in x1 size on retina screens. And not just some images, but promo images and screenshots of our extensions.

To be honest, it's very sad. Among my users, 25% have QHD and UHD screen extensions. Moreover, they are one of the most capable users. But instead of clear, beautiful images, they see blurry pictures, as if they were made by a designer student who did not know that for more than 5 years, any bitmap image should be duplicated by the x2 version for retina displays.

--

Uladzimir Yankovich,

Founder @ Manganum (manganum.app).

[Simeon Velichkov]

Exactly, and my screenshots have been like that ever since 10 years ago. Though I do understand why this additional validation is there now, and I also want to be compliant, but instead it's just being really disruptive to me personally.

[Jackie Han]

In case no one has feedback, I have submitted a suggestion to One Stop Support.

[Uladzimir Yankovich]

Jackie, my thanks ❤️

[Simeon Vincent]

There is nothing in any of the 3 emails that shows this weird new security ID consisting of a "color" and an element from the periodic table so it is impossible to submit to the Chrome Web Store One Stop Support.

Don't let that stop you. When appealing a rejection, I'd strongly encourage you to bypass this limitation by selecting the first color and element, then adding a comment to the description that explains that your rejection email didn't include a rejection code so you had to enter junk data.

Hey, can you share with us how to file an appeal with Google? Because as mentioned in other threads using the https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/contact/one_stop_support form is not very useful in case you don't have a rejection code and color for the asset rejection type in particular.

IMO the fact that image asset reviews aren't using the element-color pattern is a bug. I'm reaching out to folks about this now.

Also having the ability to zoom in those screenshots could help with the UX, but that's something that is missing ever since 2012 at least as far as I can remember. I'm sure there is a good reason for it, but I'm just saying. 

+ other comments related to images size/resolution

I shared similar feedback with the CWS designers a few months ago and the conversation went well. While I can't make any promises, I'm hopeful about changes here.

Are we just dealing with a front-end bug all this time?

At the moment I'm not sure as I'm just catching this thread now. That said, I've opened a bug report and included your and other comments from this thread. 

@Simeon, what's happening? 🤯

Not sure. I'll be digging into this more tomorrow.

Simeon - @dotproto

Chrome Extensions DevRel

[Patrick]

Thanks everyone for this thread. We encountered the same issue when we updated our build this week. Our extension was rejected because the "text is too small" in our screenshots. 

We were a bit surprised because we had not changed our screenshots for about 3 months, and our screenshots had passed all other reviews. Also, the text is clear and legible.

Furthermore, we use the same screenshots for other stores: Google Play (Android), Apple iOS, Mozilla Add-Ons, and Microsoft Edge. We have not encountered any issues with the other stores. 

Simeon, would you be able to add this to the "look into" list as well?

Best,

Patrick

[Z Yin]

Patrick, you said "our extension was rejected", could you clarify, was it rejected from publish? What I received was an "asset rejection" notice, which was just an alert, the publishing of the extension wasn't affected. The old screenshots are still hosted too.

[Patrick]

Z Yin, our extension was published (latest build was accepted) but we received an asset rejection notification - I should have been clearer in my post. What caused the confusion for us is that our screenshots have remained the same for several months, and we did not change anything related to screenshots with our latest build. It would be helpful to have more specific information as to why assets are being rejected, and to have specific guidelines with examples for text size, clarity, etc if there was a policy change that is causing asset rejection notices. As I mentioned in my prior post, our screenshots are used on many other stores and we have not had any similar issues.   

[Chid Gilovitz]

Hi everyone,

we've had the same issue on our most recent publish. Received an email afterwards notifying me that my submission of 'graphic assets has been rejected' because the text is too small.

Never mind that the images have not been updated for at least 6 months, and the text is quite readable (and would have been more readable before the web store squashed it).

It would be great to hear from the Google staff here about whether there has been a change in policy or implementation, or whether there is some kind of procedural bug which is generating these bogus rejections.

It is also unclear what the consequences of this are - what does 'reduced prominence' actually mean?

[Don Schmitt]

We also experienced this rejection some time back and are now leary of pushing any further updates.  Was there any resolution to these issues?

It appeared to me that someone flipped a switch and started treating screenshots like promotional images.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/0ee274b2-3490-4189-9c03-44ee54e91ed3n%40chromium.org.

[Chid Gilovitz]

Hi Don,

So far we have ignored this message, have done an update since, and nothing bad has happened. Still hoping for a response from the Chrome team.

[Simeon Velichkov]

I'm also waiting to see if and how is this going to affect my stats. Unfortunately I published the last release at the beginning of December right before the Christmas Holidays which is always a huge dip in weekly active user count, so I will have to wait up until around late January to know if my user base is shrinking or growing. Also maybe the impressions across the CWS could help answering that? I will post some results once I have them.

[Simeon Velichkov]

Hey, so after 2 months have passed since my screenshots got flagged I wanted to take a look back at one of my extensions to check how much and if it got affected by the 'reduced prominence' thing. As mentioned earlier there is no way for me to upload other screenshots so I will be stuck with that I guess, and also as mentioned by others having your screenshots flagged does not affect your ability to publish new releases even though I haven't done that since my last release 2 months ago.

Unfortunately this flagging situation happened around the Christmas Holidays and New Year's Even and then the Chinese New Year in 2023, but it seems that my extension is trying to recover after the holidays which is in line with previous years:

Impressions on the CWS:

Page Views:

Active Users:

Too early to tell I guess ..

[Simeon Vincent]

So far we have ignored this message, have done an update since, and nothing bad has happened. Still hoping for a response from the Chrome team.

I'm no longer with the Chrome team, but I'll share what I recall from when I followed up on this after the holiday break. 

As observed by this thread, in early December there was a notable increase in the number of asset rejections. An email should have gone out to developers that received asset rejections during this period informing them of the error. Extensions that received asset rejections during this period had the rejection verdict reversed and should not have their CWS rankings impacted.

Simeon - @dotproto

--

Simeon

Developer Advocate, Chrome

@dotproto

[Chid Gilovitz]

Thanks for response Simeon

Now that you mention I do recall an email like that but it came some time after the rejection, and didn’t specifically refer to the asset rejection, so I assumed it was regarding another issue. Makes sense now.