extensions.gnome.org - Public Alpha Now Available

["Jasper St. Pierre" <jstpierre mecheye net>]

We're happy to announce that extensions.gnome.org is now in
public alpha testing at:

 https://extensions.gnome.org

If you have GNOME Shell 3.2 on your system, you should be able to
install extensions from the website via your browser. This uses the
"GNOME Shell Integration" browser plugin which is likely already
installed on your system if you have GNOME 3.2. The plugin only works
with Firefox currently - see "Known Bugs" below.

We've seeded the site with a small set of extensions, including
the extensions from gnome-shell-extensions. If you are the author
of an extension that has been uploaded, and you want to take over
uploading future releases, please contact us, and we'll get you
access.

The set of extensions on the site is still small compared to the total
number of extensions available. We expect more extensions to be
available over the next few weeks as authors upload them and they
are reviewed.

About GNOME Shell Extensions
============================

GNOME Shell extensions are small pieces of code written by third party
developers that modify the way GNOME works. (If you are familiar with
Chrome Extensions or Firefox Addons, GNOME Shell extensions are
similar to them.)

Since extensions are created outside of the normal GNOME design and
development process, they are are supported by their authors, rather
than by the GNOME community.

Extensions provide a way to prototype out new possible features for
future versions of GNOME, and for advanced users to make
customizations in ways that aren't necessarily compatible with the
overall design vision of GNOME, but are still cool and useful to
a subset of users.

Since extensions become part of the core operating system, they need
to be checked for potential security problems. Extensions uploaded
to extensions.gnome.org go through code review before they are
made available for download. More information can be found at
https://extensions.gnome.org/about/.

Known Bugs and Problems
=======================

* There are some bugs that currently cause the browser plugin to
  not work correctly in WebKit-based browsers like Epiphany
  or Chrome. We will fix these bugs in subsequent releases of
  GNOME Shell, but for now using Firefox to access
  extensions.gnome.org is advised.

* Extensions that use GSettings to store user settings cannot be
  currently installed as a user; this limitation will be fixed
  for GNOME 3.4. In the mean time, extension authors should
  avoid the use of GSettings if they want to make their extension
  available via extensions.gnome.org.

* Due to a bug in GNOME Shell 3.2.1 code, the uninstall button
  will not work for some extensions. Disabling extensions still
  works, but if you want to remove an extension entirely, you'll
  need to manually delete it from ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions.

Reporting Problems
==================

If you find problems with the site, please file them in
bugzilla.gnome.org against the 'extensions.gnome.org' component
of the website product.

Problems with individual extensions should be reported using
the "Help! It didn't work!" link on the extension's page.

Thanks to everybody that made this happen!

--
  Jasper St. Pierre