Google Chrome automatically disables extensions

[mabrowndog]

What began as a really great browser is starting to annoy the fuck out of me. 
 
I use a bunch of different extensions in Chrome, but today when I logged on there was a pop-up notice telling me some of them have been disabled for safety reasons since they may have been installed without my permission. Except they weren't. I chose and installed all of the ones that were listed.
 
So I figure, "OK, fine. I'll just go in and manually re-enable them." Except you can't. That feature is disabled for these apps. When I click on the "learn more" link, the truth comes out:
 

For your protection, you can only use Chrome extensions that you get from the Chrome Web Store.
 
Extensions that have been disabled are grayed out and you won't be able to re-enable them.
 
 

 
One of these is a Facebook clean-up utility called Social Fixer, which allows you to manage most of the intrusive annoyances foisted upon users by the almighty Church of Zuckerberg, including the horrible pop-up photo viewer, the chat window, etc. 
 
There are also some extensions that were created for me by others with scripts to block certain useless shit from other sites (like the floating.hovering toolbars at Yardbarker, Apture, etc.that follow you as you scroll up/down).
 
I'm not holding out much hope, but is there any way to bypass the watchful controlling eye of the Google Chrome Big Brother and re-enable any of these?

 

[AlNipper49]

What began as a really great browser is starting to annoy the fuck out of me. 
 
I use a bunch of different extensions in Chrome, but today when I logged on there was a pop-up notice telling me some of them have been disabled for safety reasons since they may have been installed without my permission. Except they weren't. I chose and installed all of the ones that were listed.
 
So I figure, "OK, fine. I'll just go in and manually re-enable them." Except you can't. That feature is disabled for these apps. When I click on the "learn more" link, the truth comes out:
 
 
One of these is a Facebook clean-up utility called Social Fixer, which allows you to manage most of the intrusive annoyances foisted upon users by the almighty Church of Zuckerberg, including the horrible pop-up photo viewer, the chat window, etc. 
 
There are also some extensions that were created for me by others with scripts to block certain useless shit from other sites (like the floating.hovering toolbars at Yardbarker, Apture, etc.that follow you as you scroll up/down).
 
I'm not holding out much hope, but is there any way to bypass the watchful controlling eye of the Google Chrome Big Brother and re-enable any of these?

I had the same problem yesterday. I just said fuck it and pivoted over to Firefox for the day figuring that it was just some temporary bullshit. If it's not its not the end of the world but it does kind of suck.

 

[Curll]

Well, I get both sides. Some blackhat can create an extension that captures credit card info and distribute it as "Emoticons!" or whatever on any site. Having it vetted through the Chrome Store helps. But, you can just create something just as, if not more malicious, and put some bullshit into the TOS and have it approved.
 
All that said, I can still enable extensions not from the Chrome Store. Maybe I haven't gotten the update?

 

[mabrowndog]

Well, I get both sides. Some blackhat can create an extension that captures credit card info and distribute it as "Emoticons!" or whatever on any site. Having it vetted through the Chrome Store helps. But, you can just create something just as, if not more malicious, and put some bullshit into the TOS and have it approved.
 
All that said, I can still enable extensions not from the Chrome Store. Maybe I haven't gotten the update?

 
I didn't get the message until I rebooted Chrome this AM (I had a metric fuckton of browser windows open yesterday for the draft, NCAA baseball, Sox, Belmont, Stanley Cup, etc. and it was understandably slow as molasses). 
 
I understand the desire/need to filter out malicious content, but I don't believe for a second that's Google's motivation. It's about control and, ultimately, monetizing. I'm still pissed at them for killing off iGoogle last fall.

 

[Couperin47]

At this point anyone considering Firefox should also consider Palemoon as their browser for the following reasons:
 
1.  Has both 32 and 64 bit versions, as well as a portable version.
2. Led by an intelligent adult who is adamant that the browser should remain, lean, fast and completely customizable, will NOT be adopting the FF 29 Australis interface
    that makes FF a slavish clone of Chrome and removes 90% of the ability to customize the browser.
3. Unlike other FF variataions, Palemoon uses the same profile structure, but keeps it in a separate location, so it can be run completely parallel to FF, others like Waterfox,
    the other 64 bit compiled version, completely replace FF if installed...btw Waterfox is a fairly simplistic 64 bit version and vastly inferior to Palemoon.
4. FF is heading down the same path as Chrome: "don't worry your pretty widdle heads about this stuff, we know what's best for you fools" and deliver a Playskool interface,
    just shut up and do things OUR way.
 
I've been running it along with FF for years, though I use Palemoon 95% of the time. Investigate here:
 
http://www.palemoon.org/
 
I reiterate that you can install and try Palemoon without in any way disturbing FF, if you don't care for it you can then just easily uninstall. It allows me to have an interface that is the antithesis of
what Chrome and now FF want to foist upon us:
 

 

[75cent bleacher seat]

Thanks C47...

 

[Hendu for Kutch]

As a web developer, IE was always the enemy.  You'd always have to hack new web sites up with unnecessary code to make them work/appear properly in IE6 or IE7.   But at least those were known quantities and IE6 would remain IE6.  Chrome keeps auto-updating with unannounced changes at apparently random intervals.  It's starting to become a bigger concern than IE was.
 
Shit that was working a couple of weeks ago just up and stopped working in Chrome last week.  I know it's on Chrome because it still works in all the other browsers.  After doing some research, this is apparently a huge problem.  I found hundreds of comments from people online wondering why the fuck Chrome removed support for X, Y, and Z without announcing it.
 
Now they're also trying to destroy plugins.  Which is great in theory and OK 99% of the time, but there are still things that browsers can't handle natively and it's really f'ing up my world.
 
tl;dr version: Chrome has gone from savior to asshole very quickly.

 

[mabrowndog]

At this point anyone considering Firefox should also consider Palemoon as their browser:

 
That sounds really intriguing. Are there extensions/apps/utilities or native capability for:
 
* Downloading streaming audio & video to your hard drive in mp3, mp4 or flv formats?
* Ad blocking?
* Flash blocking?
* Selective disabling of Java and JavaScript?
* Password management?
* Web Of Trust (ratings & alerts for sites on trustworthiness, spam, phishing & child safety)?
* Lazarus Fill-In Form Recovery?
* Greasemonkey (for custom scripts)?
* CleanPrint (selectively remove/include web page content before printing pages &/or creating PDFs)?
* DownThemAll (a Firefox plug-in that allows you to download all linked images/files on a page with one click rather than doing so individually; A godsend for porn sites)

 

[smastroyin]

Am I alone in thinking that the problem with all of these tech companies is that when they get big enough, the interesting and smart people leave to form new ventures, leaving behind the fucking idiots or new hires from other useless tech companies?  It seems like all the shit that people hated about MSoft is migrating to Google and even Apple as the true thought leaders in those companies move to semi-retirement or to new private ventures.  
 
My years in corporate America have taught me that like the government, corporations become infested with bureaucracy and the voice of the customer becomes a distant point of light at the end of a tunnel of policies, procedures, risk-averse lawyers, committees, and marketing people who don't know a fucking thing.  The people who make a living off of those things, the mid-level executives, they are the ones who end up making every company the same.  
 
Google peaked around the time of the original Nexus.  Sine then, their big apps have all had updates that make them more annoying.  Unfortunately, I find the other major players just as annoying.

 

[Couperin47]

 
That sounds really intriguing. Are there extensions/apps/utilities or native capability for:
 
* Downloading streaming audio & video to your hard drive in mp3, mp4 or flv formats?
* Ad blocking?
* Flash blocking?
* Selective disabling of Java and JavaScript?
* Password management?
* Web Of Trust (ratings & alerts for sites on trustworthiness, spam, phishing & child safety)?
* Lazarus Fill-In Form Recovery?
* Greasemonkey (for custom scripts)?
* CleanPrint (selectively remove/include web page content before printing pages &/or creating PDFs)?
* DownThemAll (a Firefox plug-in that allows you to download all linked images/files on a page with one click rather than doing so individually; A godsend for porn sites)
 

 
The good news; ANY extension or plug-in that works with FF runs under Palemoon.
This is absolutely true for the 32 bit version.
I use the much better 64 bit version:  That requires that some EXTENSIONS have 64 bit versions: Java, Adobe (Shockwave) Flash and Silverlight do. Apparently all plugins simply work (if they worked with FF 28) In short, running the 64 bit version, I have never found a plugin or appearance issue...ever.
 
I run: Adblock Plus, Download Helper, IR View. Image Zoom, LastPass, Print Edit, TabMixPlus and Xmarks mainly. btw I find Download Helper rather superior for grabbing pr0n....
 
btw the look you see above is the result of rearranging the elements and using Classic Compact 24.0.2 theme and the related CC Options 24..0.2 extension, which allows for complete control of the height of each line at the top, from narrow to very narrow to "are you fucking nuts and want to go blind?"...this is especially useful on laptops obviously.
 
DUH, I guess I should add, for those who are not techie, that you can't run the 64 bit version unless, of course, you are running either Win 7 or 8 x64....

 

[mabrowndog]

Thanks for the feedback, and great news about the FF extension compatability. I'm going to give it a shot.
 
I'm running 64-bit Win 7, so I guess I'll install the 64-bit version first. I see they also have a profile migration tool, which sounds fantastic.
 
Regarding FF following the douchebag steps of Google, I found this on the Wiki page for Mozilla:
 

 
In a report released in November 2012, Mozilla reported that their total revenue for 2011 was $163 million, which was up 33% from $123 million in 2010. Mozilla noted that roughly 85% of their revenue comes from their contract with Google.

 
:blink:

 

[Couperin47]

Thanks for the feedback, and great news about the FF extension compatability. I'm going to give it a shot.
 
I'm running 64-bit Win 7, so I guess I'll install the 64-bit version first. I see they also have a profile migration tool, which sounds fantastic.
 
Regarding FF following the douchebag steps of Google, I found this on the Wiki page for Mozilla:
 
 
:blink:

 
This is well known and not a few have decided that in return for continued employment, the current leadership of Mozilla are doing Google's bidding in running the entire operation off the rails....

 

[SumnerH]

According to the FAQ, you can still enable 3rd party extensions in developer mode and in  Enterprise Policy Mode; the latter is the preferred solution if you want to pre-approve a few of them but otherwise have the browser continue to work normally.  And they'll continue to work fine on Linux and OS X.
 
http://www.chromium.org/developers/extensions-deployment-faq

 

[mabrowndog]

Just installed PaleMoon 32-bit (went with the default one-click). Looks pretty slick so far, and holy shit do the pages load fast now. Then again, I haven't installed or migrated any extensions, plug-ins or apps yet. Which leads me to...
 
The Firefox Sync apparently stopped working this week thanks to the fuckheads at Mozilla. Details here.

 

[Couperin47]

Just installed PaleMoon 32-bit (went with the default one-click). Looks pretty slick so far, and holy shit do the pages load fast now. Then again, I haven't installed or migrated any extensions, plug-ins or apps yet. Which leads me to...
 
The Firefox Sync apparently stopped working this week thanks to the fuckheads at Mozilla. Details here.

 
Yes, they are not being subtle in their herding the sheep into their brave new Chome-clone world. The Palemoon developer is already working on setting up a server of his own, but since I continue to run both FF (not allowing upgrade to 29) and Palemoon, I am using Xmarks which can keep both in sync.
 
Palemoon is inherently faster since it strips out stuff like parental controls and accessibility features, but to get the full experience you really should install the 64 bit version...

 

[PseuFighter]

hate seeing these kinds of decisions. let the user have as much choice as possible.

smastroyin -- you're spot on. i was inside big g for two years; very little innovation (at least on the teams i worked with), mountains of red tape, tons of careerists, and just oozing big company -- which was way worse when i left. i came in through an acquisition. not only did they destroy our product (through a terrible half-hearted integration, which i actually managed), but they had no problem watching 3/4 of the talent pool leave for smaller companies (some of which have already had very successful exits), and let many of our customers flee. our services layer also went to shit.

i (admittedly) do miss the paycheck. lots of money for keeping as quiet as possible (since i was probably 10 or so years away from being in any real decision making position). that's what's kept some of the older people with the kids, mortgage, etc, from leaving, as much as they don't like it. but i wanted to enjoy work, be challenged, learn new things, etc. it's just not the right place for anyone that's gone through the quick start-up world. and surrounded by a parade of people that will throw endless roadblocks at you until you just give up. the people that really dug it seemed to think they knew better than the rest of the world, and really drank the kool-aid hard. at least in the bay area, it's just thought of as another big tech company at this point, ala msft.

(sorry for the lower case; on my phone)

 

[mabrowndog]

Palemoon is inherently faster since it strips out stuff like parental controls and accessibility features, but to get the full experience you really should install the 64 bit version...

 
I'll probably do that in short order. 
 
Right now I'm having a bit of an issue with it, though I'm not sure if it's the browser or SoSH. After I log in (my username & password are saved), if I click on another page or forum it logs me right back out. Doesn't matter if it's one of the password-protected forums (P&G) or the public threads. 
 
I'm not having that problem with any other site where there's a password (Gmail, Youtube, Yuku, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I figured I'd check here first to see if I've done something ridiculously stupid with Pale Moon before I run to the SoSH support forum.

 

[Couperin47]

 
I'll probably do that in short order. 
 
Right now I'm having a bit of an issue with it, though I'm not sure if it's the browser or SoSH. After I log in (my username & password are saved), if I click on another page or forum it logs me right back out. Doesn't matter if it's one of the password-protected forums (P&G) or the public threads. 
 
I'm not having that problem with any other site where there's a password (Gmail, Youtube, Yuku, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I figured I'd check here first to see if I've done something ridiculously stupid with Pale Moon before I run to the SoSH support forum.

 
weird, I've been using Palemoon to log into SOSH for years, no such issues and offhand I can't think of any Palemoon option that would make it behave like that...

 

[Curll]

Yeah, I'm in Dev mode. That's why my extensions work 

 

[mabrowndog]

I just cleared all my cookies and I appear to be all set now.
 
I've been re-installing all my old FF add-ons so, like I said, I must've done something ridiculously stupid.

 

[mabrowndog]

Some minor growing pains, but so far so good with the Pale Moon browser. But I do have one lingering issue that relates to SoSH.
 
If I try to right-click on any posted photos (to copy the image or its URL to clipboard, or to save it), I get that fucking theater-view pop-up and there are no such right-click options. Is there something I need to do in Pale Moon to disable that? Or is this a SoSH tech issue? Again, I've never had this issue with either Firefox or Chrome. (FWIW I've already tried disabling flash, but the same thing happens.)
 
Thanks in advance.

 

[SumnerH]

Yeah, I'm in Dev mode. That's why my extensions work 

 
You don't even have to be in dev mode, if you approve them through the enterprise policy mode.  The whole thing's pretty reasonable, really; they made it tough for malicious extensions to force themselves in, but provided multiple ways for people to use 3rd party extensions if they want to.

 

[Couperin47]

Some minor growing pains, but so far so good with the Pale Moon browser. But I do have one lingering issue that relates to SoSH.
 
If I try to right-click on any posted photos (to copy the image or its URL to clipboard, or to save it), I get that fucking theater-view pop-up and there are no such right-click options. Is there something I need to do in Pale Moon to disable that? Or is this a SoSH tech issue? Again, I've never had this issue with either Firefox or Chrome. (FWIW I've already tried disabling flash, but the same thing happens.)
 
Thanks in advance.

 
When I right click on any image I get the image highlighted in that tab, right click on that and I get the full set of options to save etc. It's either some addon or how you have the default set in Options for that type of file ? Again, Palemoon shouldn't act differently than FF...not sure what a "theatre-view popup" is exactly.

 

[Marceline]

I used to use Pale Moon, but switched to Chrome about a year ago due to extreme sluggishness in Pale Moon. There is noticeable lag scrolling up and down web pages or clicking on links on almost all web sites.
 
I had never tried 64-bit Pale Moon before, so I gave that a shot yesterday after reading this thread. Same problem.
 
I think it has something to do with extensions because if I disable all my extensions, it seems fine. However, I'm able to use the same extensions in Chrome with no problems. The extensions I'm using: Adblock plus, Disconnect, Lastpass
 
Guess I'll be sticking with Chrome unless anyone knows of anything obvious with those 3 extensions that I'm overlooking.

 

[mabrowndog]

When I right click on any image I get the image highlighted in that tab, right click on that and I get the full set of options to save etc. It's either some addon or how you have the default set in Options for that type of file ? Again, Palemoon shouldn't act differently than FF...not sure what a "theatre-view popup" is exactly.

 
Here's what I get when I right-click a posted SoSH image in Chrome:
 

 
 
Here's what I get when right-clicking in Pale Moon:
 

 
That's the "theater" effect I was referring to, similar to the Facebook photo viewer. The lights darken, and the image pops out.
 
When I click on "SAVE", it merely opens the image in another tab. I can save from there, but this whole thing creates multiple useless and needless extra steps: I have to right click on the image again and choose my option. Once saved, I have to close the new tab. Then I need to navigate back to the SoSH tab. Finally, I have manually close the theater photo window by either clicking CLOSE or hitting my ESC key.

 

[Couperin47]

AHH, OK. Gotcha, the bad news, this has noting to do with Palemoon, it's how Firefox operates. Only 2 suggestions: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/context-menu-image-saver/?src=search is an addon that lets you customize where images get saved to...once you get a menu with the option to save.
 
Other suggestion, I just created a TinyPic account, which turned out to be a slick way to enter images here... I'd been using a stupid and clumsy method until now, and apparently if the image has been uploaded to SOSH via that site, when you hit save, you are sent directly to your Tinypic account where you can one click upload the file to your folders.

 

[SumnerH]

Tinypic is great, it's entirely replaced imagesocket for me.

 

[Couperin47]

I used to use Pale Moon, but switched to Chrome about a year ago due to extreme sluggishness in Pale Moon. There is noticeable lag scrolling up and down web pages or clicking on links on almost all web sites.
 
I had never tried 64-bit Pale Moon before, so I gave that a shot yesterday after reading this thread. Same problem.
 
I think it has something to do with extensions because if I disable all my extensions, it seems fine. However, I'm able to use the same extensions in Chrome with no problems. The extensions I'm using: Adblock plus, Disconnect, Lastpass
 
Guess I'll be sticking with Chrome unless anyone knows of anything obvious with those 3 extensions that I'm overlooking.

 
I use Adblock + and Lastpass and I don't notice any lag (admittedly 'lag' may be in the eye of the beholder), Let me investigate Disconnect to see what it is and I'll probably install just to see the effect. Keep in mind I completely disable Hibernate, Indexing and System Protection (the roll back feature) and I'm running Win 7 Ultimate x64, it's always possible the browser+addon+ one of these features (or AV programs) could be the combo that's creating a lag.
I actually run Windows Defender + ESET NOD32 7 + Webroot SecureAnywhere all concurrently and they have zero effect.
 
UPDATE: I've installed Disconnect and it also has zero effect on my scrolling which is very fast and smooth, I've now tried it on a variety of sites like SOSH and Newegg .
                   Below are the scroll options in Advanced Options I'm using, pretty sure they are the defaults
 

 
One other thought, there are some long standing FF issues with some video drivers, esp if you haven't updated yours to something recent, try, under Advanced Options, General, turning off the option to use hardware accelleration.

 

[Marceline]

Thank you for the suggestions. I also disable hibernate, indexing, and system protection on all my machines. Win7 x64. I haven't updated the video drivers in ages so I'll give that a shot. I also turn off smooth scrolling. I don't recall what I had set for hardware acceleration, so maybe that's it too.
 
It's an Acer Aspire One notebook with an Intel Celeron processor, so it's not exactly high end equipment.