Customize your "new tab" extension

[Kyrax]

Hello everyone !

Here is my first Chrome Extension, CustomNewTab !

This little extension will allow you to customize Chrome's default new tab.

Features :

• Display/Hide the most visited speed dial.
• Display/Hide the quick searches boxes.
• Display/Hide the recent bookmarks box.
• Display/Hide the recently closed tabs box.
• Use a whole other page instead of the default new tab.
• Insert another page as a frame inside your New Tab page.

Here is a screen shot of that last feature

Installation information :

Since extensions are still working only with Chrome 2.0+, you will need use the latest dev version of Chrome.
To change channel, see here.

Then, you need to download CustomNewTab.zip and extract it to any folder you like. Let's say C:\ChromeExtension.

Create a shortcut to chrome.exe.
Right click on that shortcut, go to properties.
Under "target", make sure you have

"YOUR_CHROME_EXE_PATH" --enable-extensions --load-extension="C:\ChromeExtension"

Of course, replace "C:\ChromeExtension" with the folder where you extracted the manifest.json and the custom_new_tab.js.

You can verify if everything is correctly installed by restarting Chrome.. then,
navigate to chrome-ui://extensions/ (simply paste it in your address bar) and you should see CustomNewTab there.

Now for the fun part !

Customizing your New Tab :

Right now, if everything is working as planned, your plugin is installed.. but your new tab will still be the same !
That is simply because you haven't customized it yet.

To do this, you need to go to your "C:\ChromeExtension" folder (or any other folder where you extracted the extension) and open with any text editor "custom_new_tab.js".

In there, there is a section with different variables which you can change.
More detailed instructions are offered inside the file.

Let's say you want to remove the Most Visited section of the new tab and use http://www.google.com inside a frame in your new tab.

You simply have to follow these (very) simple steps :

1. find the "hideMostVisited" variable.
2. Modify it's value from false to true.
3. Find the "displayAnotherPageInstead" variable.
4. Modify it's value from 0 to 2.
5. Find the "pageToDisplayURL" variable.
6. Change it's value to "http://www.google.com".
7. Save.
8. Open a new tab ! (no need to restart Chrome)

If you have any question or would like to see some new features, feel free to request them here or send me an email at " GuiSim@Gmail.com ".

Also, if there are any bugs, please tell me and I will do my best to fix them !

The code is released under GPL.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Thanks / Comments / Flames appreciated !

More screens :

[zzztag]

I used to have NoSpeedDial from adsweep installed. Removed that one (I think) and tried to setup your script.

Get the following error message when I start up chrome:

Errors
Could not load extension from 'C:\myextension'. Invalid value for 'content_scripts[0].matches[0]'.

And now I cant get NoSpeedDial to work either :P Any suggestions?

[SifJar]

could you package this into a .crx file? would make installing much easier. otherwise i'll just do it myself, but i figured you should do it, seeing as you made the extension

EDIT: nvm. doesnt work for me any way. get same error as guy above ^^

[kristiutz]

zzztag you recieve that error because you have to modify "matches": ["chrome-ui://newtab/*"] to "matches": ["chrome://newtab/*"]
...you find this in the manifest.JSON

cheers ! Thanks a lot for this extension !

____________________

//edit

CustomNewTab 0.4 is now available!

You can now get the latest version of CustomNewTab on this page : http://code.google.com/p/customnewtab/

[sulasno]

try adding the following to the Chrome shortcut on your desktop and click on a new tab

--new-new-tab-page

[Michaelb]

i cant open the newtab page(the modded on)
im running google chrome 3.0.190.4
the chrome://extensions/ work but the page wont

[Charlie]

i cant open the newtab page(the modded on)
im running google chrome 3.0.190.4
the chrome://extensions/ work but the page wont

Hang tight your thread is here: http://chromespot.com/showthread.php?t=2057

[bookmarkmaster]

Many Firefox users didn’t want to switch to Google Chrome because of unavailability of Firefox like add-ons and Extension but soon this reason will vanish as announcement of Google Chrome Extension support was made at the end of April and today we already have few working extensions of Google Chrome.

You can download Google Chrome extension like Gmail Checker & Subscribe in Google Reader from official Chromium website. Here is another Google Chrome Extension CustomNewTab which lets you to customize Google Chrome New Tab page.

We have absolutely no control over what is to be shown on New Tab page of Google Chrome and CustomNewTab Extension is specifically designed to address that issue. CustomNewTab is a Chrome extension fully compatible with Chrome 2.0.180.0.
Features of CustomNewTab Google Chrome Extension

1. Hide/show specific sections of the new tab page

2. Use another web page as the default new tab page

3. Display another page inside your new tab page

4. Easy to use user interface for customization

[pcki11]

this extension no longer works, and probably never will. chrome:// pages are inaccessible to extensions for now.

[sulasno]

found one here

http://bbs.webmou.com/thread-7070-1-1.html#lastpost

Refresh the page after the installation of plug-ins can be used
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download and info here
http://code.google.com/p/nk-gesture/downloads/list