Chrome Web Store have a new look | Hacker News Reader

Chrome Web Store have a new look

chrome.google.com

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I was hoping that they restored the review ordering back to how it was. (Google is aware of this and working on a fix (there is talk on the Chrome extension developers mailing list); just hoped to see the fix now.)

I believe they now sort them by 'usefulness' when up until a month ago or so they sorted them by date. The current order is annoying because 1) the top reviews tend to be older and often talk about old bugs giving new potential users inaccurate impressions, 2) it is harder to see the new reviews (although the developer can log into a different interface and see them sorted by date), and 3) it makes conversations between the developer and users harder to follow.

The reason the last point is relevant is that for many users posting a review is the most obvious way to mention bugs. They should let developers respond to individual reviews and provide optional links to a bug tracker and a forum to better move traffic there.

UPDATE: Noticed that it now only allows you to write one 'review' so a developer can no longer respond multiple times; hopefully some of the above suggestions will be implemented.

A couple of other unrelated changes I noticed:

* They include your Google profile info when you write a review; not sure if you can leave a review anonymously (beyond having an anonymous Google profile) anymore.

* They no longer show a count of how many people +1ed it (but still let you do so from there.)

I agree. First couple of comments in my app's page are my replies to the users questions. Which look nonsense since the questions are in random order...

You know when you go to Wal-Mart and there's that giant basket full of $5 movies? There "may" be a gem in there, but you have to stack and pile them all over the place, dig through loads of repeat garbage, and just hope something is in there you want. After 5 minutes you're frustrated because you just wasted your time.

The Chrome Web Store is a pile of apps - especially games. Except there's no way to pile, sort, and cart them. If you could at least STAR a game so you could go back and look at the ones you've given a STAR to later, then it would be helpful.

G+1 doesn't help because I don't want to +1 something that may suck. You CAN create a bookmark while a pop-up of the app is showing, and when you return to that bookmark, the app popup shows.

But you know what would make sense because it's the way SHOPPING HAS BEEN DONE FOREVER? A ton of categories and sorting methods so you can browse small niches of apps you are interested in, like Platform games, or RPG games, or Sports games.

Not on the Chrome Web Store. Nope. Just GAMES. That's it. GAMES. Thomas the Train is right next to Counter Strike.

Ridiculous.

Title change suggestion: "Chrome Web Store has a new look"

Possible culprit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural#Discretionary_p...

I disagree - I speak British English and have never seen Store as a plural possessive before. I think it's just a mistake.

Sorry, I can't edit now. My bad. Not a native speaker :( If someone can edit it would be great.

Wow thats one long page.

Seriously though I like it. I just kept scrolling and reading, scrolling and reading. I think this worked well as I had no desire to look in any of the categories and just wanted to browse. And browse I did.

I went to the link using safari and got the message:

"Sorry, we don't support your browser just yet."

Will the chrome web store _ever_ support other browsers? Seems like bad copy otherwise.

It is the Chrome web store. Or you you complaining about the "yet"? I assume Google wants to support all modern browsers with the shiny new layout so they can show off all the fun and productive apps you are missing out on.

> Will the chrome web store _ever_ support other browsers?

It's very confusing.

On the one hand, it is the "Chrome Web Store". Not the "Google Web Store", which is what we can assume they would call it if it were meant for all browsers. Just like it isn't "Chrome Maps", it's "Google Maps". So the name implies it is Chrome-only.

On the other hand, it does say "we don't support your browser just yet", as you quote from there.

My bet is that they will never support other browsers, since apparently they allow applications into the Chrome store that use Chrome-specific technologies (NaCl, for example). So given that, the store's applications will not work in all browsers anyhow.

And that is kind of worrying. A chrome-only store for web apps is against the idea of an open web, where any website is accessible from any standards-compliant browser.

To the people modding me down - can you explain why? I thought I gave a fair analysis of the situation.

Is there something I'm missing that justifies downmodding me? Please tell me hacker news isn't degenerating into reddit.

Wow, that really looks good, nothing i would have expected from the pre-Page Google.

Looks pretty and I like the general trend of Google's new design, but it horribly breaks search (example: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search/gmail?newlook). I'd rather having functioning ugly over broken sleek.

Front page looks good, but I don't really like the popup format for the apps. It feels too cramped.

Most of my extensions don't have enough UI to justify the 1280x800 screenshot it now requires (if you want to update an old extension or upload a new one), so now the extension is hardly visible in them.

Edit: Scaling it up looks decent.

It looks like they don't have to, my favourite chrome extension Viumium just uses a youtube videos as it's header.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgnhh...

Really dislike that popup interface used, the popup is not clearly distinguishable from the background. And the font just looks poorly rendered.

Like the interface up until that step, its clean, just seems broken when it comes to showing the actual information you want.

A bit off topic, but NPR chrome app is awesome! http://www.npr.org/webapp

If anything, new Chrome store design makes things more discover-able than before.

I don't like it. Not enough whitespace, too colorful.

I think it'd be better if the middle column was a scrollable list and the right column was fixed and display information when middle column boxes hovered.

Also, if I were looking for browser addons, I'd be looking for a "Chrome Extensions Center."

"Chrome Web Store" could mean many things. Web could mean anything so it should be omitted, and store is misleading if things are free.

Google had something like a Chrome Extensions Center before this but then added apps that you can pay for and started calling it a store. Apple's Appstore also calls itself a store, yet many of the downloads are free so calling it that is not misleading, at least in a new way. I imagine it is called a 'web store' since other stores tend to be either mobile (Apple, Android, ...) or desktop (Mac App Store, new Windows 8 Store coming next year) and it promotes the idea of a webbrowser being an operating system (albeit it is redundant).

The contrast between the body text and background is way too low (designers, please read http://contrastrebellion.com/).

Having one scrolled window inside another scrolled window also seems to be a bad idea, but overall this is a great improvement over the old design.

I'm a bit surprised with the positive comments: don't you find the layout confusing? It's hard to scroll horizontally and vertically with the eyes especially with the diverse fonts, colors, etc. making up each app description.

Wow, I thought I'd just stumbled across the Apple App Store. Just look at that breadcrumb navigation!

If it was Apple, the buttons would be done with images, and have nice corners with aliasing. None of this horrible CSS business ;)

Wow look at all the games! Are these all made with JavaScript and HTML5?

I doubt it. I know non-game apps can/do use Flash. Remember, Google bundles Flash with Chrome.

At this point, my guess is the majority of games are HTML5 based. Look at all the HTML5 games that came out of Mozilla's Game On contest for example. https://gaming.mozillalabs.com/games/

They can run in whatever technology the browser has installed, which can even include Java applets. Runescape for example. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ajjblpfpopipimofkh...

They can be made with whatever web technology the developers want to use. I believe however that Angry Birds is HTML5 though.

Yep, it's written in GWT. http://www.quora.com/Angry-Birds-game/How-did-Rovio-build-it...

Note: You aren't seeing the new design unless you're using Chrome.

Look around. It seems as though style changes are being rolled out across the whole Google portfolio -- I've noticed changes to Blogger and Search during the day.

The problem with the Chrome Web Store is that 90% of the apps there are bullshit. Most of them are simply shortcuts to Web App; which is in my opinion quite disappointing. I was expecting to find applications similar to "Quick Note" (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mijlebbfndhelmdpml...).

The application shouldn't be in the cloud. It can save data their and requires an Internet connection to work, but the application should be downloaded and make heavy use of Chrome features. Applications should be picked carefully, and only few should be there. Only the good ones stand out.

Actually, it's just a link farm, and a free advertising medium for many Web Apps.

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