Another of Google’s first ‘sample’ extensions was one which showed off a couple of the capabilities of the plugins, but also added a useful function to news junkies everywhere. The Google news top stories extension is very simple – it adds a button to the top right hand corner of the Chrome browser, and when this is clicked it brings up a box which lists the current top five News stories taken directly from – you guessed it – Google News!
As you can see, all of the stories have a little plus sign next to them. When the user clicks on this the individual item is expanded and shows more information, including photos taken from the stories. This resizing and data retrieval all happens in real time, but it is very smooth.
It’s a basic plugin as far as the general development of Chrome addons goes, but it does give a good idea to website owners and developers about what the potential of these addons might be. You can imagine every website trying to clone this one and have its users install the plugin so that they are always one click away from a feature-rich RSS feed of their latest content.
You can find more information about the Google News top stories extension over at the Google developer samples page, or click below to download and install it right now.
Google News top stories
Direct download – Google news extension download
Homepage – http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/samples.html
