building the future, one idea at a time...
Having discovered that Google Chrome now supports extensions (Hurrah!), I had a go at installing the rather excellent Cool Iris image previewing plugin, and was greeted with this screen, which basically advises anyone wanting to use the plugin on Chrome that they can’t implement it until Google add additional functionality.
What I like about this is that rather than just not listing a Mac OS X version on their website, they’ve gone that extra step to say “We’ve done everything we can possibly do, it’s out of our hands” – thus redirecting any potential user disappointment at the one group who can actually do something about it – the Google Chrome development team.
There’s definitely a lesson here for anyone designing software. If a third-party dependency is blocking a much requested user feature, harness that user desire and get them to pester the third party for you!
BTW, I just noticed that the screenshot is different from when I first saw this page. Originally where it said “The Chrome team understands the importance of this and has scheduled it in a future release”, it said “Please contact the Google Chrome team so they know how important this is”, along with details on how to contact them. I guess this shows that this technique really worked – They got Google’s attention and agreement to fix it!