Best Practices

[Roland Meier]

Hi,

your great extension Tab Thumbnails Switcher is marked as not complying to Best Practices, and in Chrome Extension Manager I get the message that it will soon be not supported any more.

Can you do anything about it?

[Alex]

Same for AutoControl as well. Just saw the warning and hope that it won't be removed from Chrome.

[AutoControl support]

The solution for now is to force-enable "Manifest V2" support.

Please follow the instructions at: http://autocontrol.app/force-enable-Manifest-V2-support

Hopefully, next year there will be a permanent solution.

[Roland Meier]

Opera Browser in all variants (main, beta, dev, GX) is missing in the reg files.

[AutoControl support]

Unfortunately, Opera does not support system policies. However, there are a couple of flags at chrome://flags that may help:

1. Extension Manifest V2 Deprecation Warning Stage
2. Extension Manifest V2 Deprecation Disabled Stage
   

You must enter the word "Manifest" in the top search bar in order to reveal them. By disabling both flags, the browser should stop complaining.

[Alex]

Is there a plan to export to Firefox? Chrome will going towards Manifest V3 (Ublock origin doesn't work anymore) and by June 2025 and if the core functions of AutoControl/Thumbnail Switcher are inherent to Manifest V2 functions, the apps might not work longterm.

[AutoControl support]

AutoControl can be ported to the new MV3 platform with the exception of the "RUN SCRIPT" action, which MV3 does not currently allow.

Google staffers have said that MV3 will have the necessary functionality for the "RUN SCRIPT" action to work. However, they haven't been able to provide a timeline for when that will happen. Therefore we are delaying the transition to MV3 as much as possible.

Once June 2025 is approaching we'll have no choice but to make the switch.

Firefox, on the other hand, is a much bigger problem. AutoControl relies not only on the browser's interface for extensions but also on the native component which interacts with the browser using OS-native interfaces. That's the realm in which Firefox and Chrome are completely different. In other words, supporting Firefox would mean a lot more coding effort. This, coupled with the fact that Firefox's market share is lower and lower every year, makes the cost-benefit relationship unfavorable.

[Justice in the System]

Hadn't known this was an issue honestly. Maxthon browser has not mentioned it at least. Have not checked Vivaldi or Brave. 

By the way, it you guys really want to get a little squirrely, checkout Mises on Android. That browser has handled every extension I've downloaded from the Chrome Web Store so far! This one though, AutoControl, I have yet to try but is one of the two biggest things that even got me to start learning to code. #1 - so I could really uncover the full potential of AutoControl; and #2 - trading. Now I just wonder would I ever know enough about coding before Google breaks what didn't need fixing, generates what should've been created, and sells every one their pile of digital overhead secondhand just to keep us as customers while managing to be (along with others like Microsoft) the ones manufacturing vulnerabilities that become exploited.

But I digress, I'll save that last bit for another day... at any rate and be that as it may, now that I bring this back to my own attention, I'm about to download AutoControl on my Android tablet and see what's up. I may have just entered the void.