Chrome Improvement Project

Chrome. It's the best browser. But it also has some quirks I personally find annoying and by the power vested in me I shall right these wrongs.

Quirk One - New Tab Google Doodles

I don't mind the design of the new tab page in Chrome. In fact I think it's pretty nice. HOWEVER I really don't like the design language of the new tab page being compromised for the Google Doodle. Due to security limitations in the permissions Chrome can grant Extensions we are not able to intercept or modify requests on chrome://newtab. Instead a near perfect recreation of the new tab page was built from scratch to provide all the same functionality with a local mirror.

Disable Google Chrome Google Doodle - Default new tab (left) vs Recreation (right)

As a result, no doodles. If you really want you can change the search box's color back to white but I think it look nice this way. The signin and voice search are purely cosmetic.

Free and Open Source (MIT License)

Download for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/minimal-new-tab/afnmoecpnepccekbinlapeolhgdgjclm

https://github.com/downthecrop/minimal-new-tab

Quirk Two - Themed Scroll Bars

This is less of a problem with Chrome itself and more of a problem with Windows 10 and their ugly scrollbars. Using Webkit CSS we are able to override these system defaults. When creating this extension I wanted to keep the permission model as light as possible. This extension requires the all_urls permission to keep a unified theme across all pages and as such is a big security risk. Because of this I am utilizing pure CSS and content_scripts. This extension is completely static and thus cannot read and page content or browsing data.

Chrome minimal scrollbar - Default Windows 10 (left) vs Custom CSS only content_script extension (right)

Free and Open Source (MIT License)

Download for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-minimal-scrollbar/bcbbhmacggoijgmopaeaaclkemaagdio

https://github.com/downthecrop/minimal-scrollbar