Right click option disappeared

[Michael Norris]

The option to save my session disappeared from my right click menu. Has this happened to anyone else?

[Hansifer]

Hi Michael,

Sorry for this. Unfortunately Google insisted on the removal of the permission that enabled that feature. 

I received notice late last night that Session Buddy had in fact been taken down from the Chrome Web Store for policy violation. Removing the permissions enabling right click menu integration was the only way I could get it reinstated.

I'm in the process of writing a pinned post for this forum about it. Would have done so sooner but I was up late scrambling to make the necessary changes.

I apologize for the inconvenience. I know it was a useful feature and a disruption to have it taken away so abruptly.

Hans

[Michael Norris]

Well that sucks, but fair enough. I liked that feature because I have limited RAM available and having that button let me know Session Buddy didn't crash.

This might be a dumb question, but is there a way for us to enable it locally? Like if I ran the extension unpacked or something?      

[Hansifer]

Not a dumb question at all, but I can't provide copies to run locally in its current form because some of SB's features rely on a static extension id. If you install locally, that changes.

You also miss out on updates and Chrome will yell at you about running developer mode extensions every time you start it (unless you're running Chrome Canary or similar).

Hans

[Frank]

That's strange. I still have many extensions that add items to the context menu. How can we save a session from any page now? I've never been able to get the keyboard shortcuts to work. What's the shortcut to save a session? The options only say 'S'.

Thanks.

[Hansifer]

It's unclear what specifically triggers policy violations and they are intentionally coy about it to prevent gaming by bad actors.

That said, it seems they consider the combination of requested permissions in the context of an extension's stated purpose, among other factors.

I'm looking at alternatives and considering as a short-term solution the addition of a keyboard shortcut that can be assigned to allow saving sessions from any web page. I am proceeding with caution though because I don't want to risk triggering another violation.

Hans

[Frank]

Thanks for your reply and the extensive explanation you posted. This is indeed very mysterious. The only thing I can think of is they assume you're abusing the "Display notifications" permission, which is clearly not the case. Here is some information I found related to this:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21242597/google-chrome-web-store-new-spam-policy-extensions

https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/program_policies#spam

Specifically:

"Notification Abuse: We do not allow extensions that abuse, or are associated with abuse, of notifications by sending spam, ads, promotions, phishing attempts, or unwanted messages that harm the user’s browsing experience."

Obviously, none of this applies to your extension. Is there any chance you could appeal?

On Sunday, May 10, 2020 at 3:41:26 PM UTC-4, Hansifer wrote:

It's unclear what specifically triggers policy violations and they are intentionally coy about it to prevent gaming by bad actors.

That said, it seems they consider the combination of requested permissions in the context of an extension's stated purpose, among other factors.

[Hansifer]

That seems like a likely theory, but I honestly have no idea and there is seemingly no way to know for sure.

I considered keeping the context menu action without the notification, but that IMO significantly diminishes the value of the feature. Their language with regard to multiple rejected submissions is quite ominous (permanent developer ban from the Web Store). I didn't want to take any chances.

I've done quite a bit of digging, but have not come across any arbitration or appeals process.

Hans

[Frank]

It's certainly not worth the risk of getting banned, of course.

Perhaps an alternative to the notification could be changing the color of the extension's toolbar icon to green, to signify the current session has indeed been saved? Or just flashing the icon from blue to green and back a few times. Another idea would be only reinstating the "Save current session" item in the extension's menu (right-click on extension's toolbar icon) with a timestamp of the last saved session underneath.

The notification was nice, but all that is really needed is a confirmation the save was successful.

Thanks for your continued efforts!

[Hansifer]

Thanks for the suggestions.

The icon flashing was actually part of the session save feedback. This would work well by itself for the toolbar icon menu. I'll give that some thought. All things equal I'll naturally be favoring solutions that don't request additional perms going forward.

Hans

[Alexandre Nicastro]

I totally agree with Frank's suggestions here. The only reason notifications worked for me was for confirmation that the session had been saved.

I think a good idea before implementing something is to talk to Chrome's devs team through email, Slack, GitHub, etc. I'm sure they'll try to help you with that!

[FH]

Any ETA on when this will be implemented? Any visible cue on the extension's icon would be enough.

Thanks,

FH