This is why developers need to REALLY understand they are not like other people when building product -----

1)Create a directory [fair enough] 2)put a manifest.json 2a) Add content_scripts 2b) css attribute 2b) plus a matching attribute and 3)css file. 4)Turn on developer mode 5) Load directory

Do you really think non-developers are creating user stylesheets to begin with?

As the commit message notes, the current setup already requires putting a .css file in the right location inside the user-data-dir.

As author of Safari User CSS extension[1], most of support email I've ever got are from non-developers. There are many kind I can recall, from those who simply want to adjust font sizes of a site permanently, to following tutorials on website on how to customize YouTube layout, to those that wrote userstyles on their own. I even got questions like "how do I turn Google black"/"how do I remove x from this url" sometimes.

I'm not sure about Chrome, but Safari had a similar feature but it lacked a way to scope stylesheets to certain domain. If Chrome userstyles behaves the same way then I don't think this change will affect those users anyway since being able to scope userstyles to certain domain seems very important to them.

[1] http://code.grid.in.th

I have had to walk people through the process of downloading a user stylesheet and setting it up for use, typically for accessibility purposes.

I don't want to imagine that process getting even more complex than it already is.

An extension like Stylish makes it much easier to install a custom stylesheet than the standard "user stylesheet" feature. Not harder.

> Do you really think non-developers are creating user stylesheets to begin with?

Then ask yourself why they are called user stylesheets?

IMHO all these attempts at taking away features "because most of the users won't ever use them" or similar reasons, and then saying "but developers can just do {more complicated thing}, it's better" is a terribly wrong direction that a lot of software seems to be heading in.

"Most of the users won't ever use them" is definitely a valid observation, but how about the ones who do? They probably use them because they discovered that feature and decided to play with it more, learn about it, and found out how useful it could be. By removing them, many more who would've otherwise discovered them will not, they will have a harder time learning about these things that benefit them, and instead remain ignorant. I find this to be almost patronising.

This isn't "taking a feature away." It is deciding that such a feature is better implemented in extensions.

An extension like this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylish/fjnbnpbmke...

I have seen more than a few Linux screenshots with customized Xdefaults and customized user stylesheets. Granted, they are advanced user, but they were not developers.

I am a non dev. I just tried the recipe provided by leobelle using the files provided in gist.github and it works fine. I had to change "matches" to use "<all_urls>" though. ------------------- Now I get a popup whenever I start Chrome telling me to disable developer mode extensions -- how to get rid of that?

Only a developer would be writing CSS, though.

Maybe only developers would write CSS from scratch, but there are plenty of non-devs who are capable of finding CSS snippets (e.g. on userstyles.org) and adding it to some sort of user stylesheet. However, once they're lost once the process gets beyond "find your user stylesheet at this path" or "click to install with Stylish."

Are you implying that "non-developers" should be discouraged from doing so? Would you agree if CSS was replaced with HTML?

Consider that many people learned how to write their own webpages with nothing more than a browser and a text editor, and the simplicity and soft error recovery characteristics of HTML is what I think was responsible for a large part of the Internet's growth. The barrier to entry was low, so it was easy to participate. Many people I know learned how to create webpages this way, largely by example (i.e. view source). Many of them also learned a bit of CSS too. These users produced and consumed content. But now, all I see is a growing divide between "users" and "developers", with these changes in browsers both reflecting and encouraging it, and I can't see that as being at all a good thing.

Or install Stylish, which makes it even simpler.

The problem with Stylish is the same problem with every other chrome extension. It can access all your data on all websites. It can surreptitiously autoupdate. I wouldn't want a person I knew to look over my shoulder while typing in my banking password, but I'm going to trust this extension with everything? I have ghostery and ad-block plus, and that's scary enough. That's it, that and my own extensions. I don't know anything about who made Stylish.

I have this exact problem with a lot of extensions I would like to use, so I only actually use one that extension which I implicitly trust anyway, LastPass. Here's an example, I use both Mac and Linux but on Linux I would like to have a more native looking scrollbar. Such functionality exist as extensions but I really do not want to trust a scrollbar plugin to have access to all data on all my websites (this is the permission required). I have been slowly (painfully) moving back towards Firefox recently just because on Linux Chrome is so out of place, but the Chrome Dev Tools are still way better.

So why do you trust Chrome in the first place?

I assume that Google is giving me a free browser because it will drive traffic and revenue to the search engine. There is no reason for Google to be nefarious to make money.

I cannot guess the motivations of free plugin developers.

Stylish is GPL v3, according to the FF addon page.

Google's most valuable asset is its reputation; switching cost are still pretty low for most of their properties. But, not only does Google have a disincentive for being nefarious in that fashion, they're also under more scrutiny vis-à-vis Chrome (which would be effective even if it were not open source).

> they're also under more scrutiny vis-à-vis Chrome (which would be effective even if it were not open source).

Chrome is not open source. Chromium is, but they are not the same.

You think Google would steal my banking information or my identity?

You can also just create a *.user.js file and drop it on the extensions page. (Still works in chrome 35.)

That's awesome. Never knew that, though admittedly I've not really immersed myself in how Chrome extensions actually work. Thanks for the example! Learn something new everyday :)