Isvhsopen Chrome Extension

Hey guys, I made an Extension to show the status of isvhsopen.com in the toolbar of Google Chrome! It’s currently on GitHub (not in the Chrome Web Store yet).

This extension places an icon in the toolbar of Google Chrome, showing whether VHS is open or closed, and the time that it is open until. It does this by polling http://www.isvhsopen.com/api/status/ once a minute (defined in background.js). By clicking the icon, you can prompt it to poll immediately and update the icon.

When the space is open, the closing time is shown using an icon badge. Since badges are limited to 4 characters, the time is shown in 24-hour HHMM format. The badge color is configured to fade from green (closing in >5h) to yellow (closing in 1h) to red (closing in 1 min).

When the isvhsopen status changes, a browser notification pops up to alert the user.

To use this extension in developer mode, go to chrome://extensions/, check the Developer Mode checkbox in the top right, and drag the isvhsopen extension folder onto the window. I plan to submit it to the Chrome Web Store after a period of public feedback and beta testing.

Here’s an example of the icon in its different colour states:
image

I’d really appreciate any feedback and help on testing and improving the Extension before I put it into the store. I didn’t spend a lot of time on the icons, so if you’d like to improve them, please do! I don’t know my tools well enough to make alpha transparencies look perfect. This is my first time building a Chrome Extension, but I’d be happy to answer any questions (what each icon is for, what is possible with extensions, how to debug, etc) if you’re interested.

8 Likes

Sweet, great job, I would use it, if I used chrome

works well, very cool

just installed; I’ll give it a spin

hmm it couldn’t find a manifest file. perhaps I’m doing something wrong

had that my first try too. download, extract, and pick the isvhsopen folder INSIDE the extracted folder, not the actual extracted file.

Yes, thanks for explaining. You want to drag and drop the folder named isvhsopen, not the root directory.

Schweet I shall try that.

Bernie Koestlmaier

Coast Precision CNC Ltd.

604.318.1224

The extension has been working well and consistently, so I’ve published it to the Chrome Web Store. Get it here!

Github repo is still here.

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I’ve been running it since you announced it and it hasn’t been an issue other than the little “are you sure you want to run this in dev mode?” popup each time, but that is hardly your fault :stuck_out_tongue: . Thanks!

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Thanks for beta testing! Yeah, you can now remove that one, uncheck Developer mode in chrome://extensions, and install it from the store. Then you won’t get the dev mode warning anymore.

2 Likes

Well done Shane!. Just installed and works great. :slight_smile: