Some notes and suggestions

[anynomal]

Hey There,

I was quite impressed when I first saw this, it really does deliver on your description of pleasing to look at, and it matches the Material UI great!

I do have some suggestions though,

• As noted in Add Bookmark  #234, Add Bookmark Bar Toggle to Sidebar Settings #262 and Add the Options to add the shortcut icon's from the client side to improve customization #259 and a number of reviews, I'm sure, your current priority should be bookmarks.

  • I saw that the author appears to be working on it which is great; it's not just the fact that it's so highly requested, but that the current work-around (alert) does quite detract from the otherwise pleasing experience. As they were doing so emulating the native bookmark experience would be a great initial route.

• On the topic of detracting - these are quite minor, but they add up

  • The weather icons (at least the cloudy ones that I've seen so far) are pretty low resolution which stands out in the otherwise seamless ui. I suggest you store a collection instead (SVGs in chrome.storage.local). It'll also save the user a request on every load (less of an issue considering caching).
  • Another is the settings UI. It's quite noisy/overwhelming to look at, but an easy solution are categories, perhaps even collapsible. (Think of mobile settings panels or the Pixel settings app itself)
  • The feedback button also leads to a 404

• For the weather, I can see how that's a challenge - for that you could, for now, try to prefetch the day's outlook and perhaps even a light weekly outlook (once a week), to have something in bouts of no connection.

  • Tangentially related you should also store the location, and perhaps only check periodically. (e.g. once a day)
  • These things and other settings should be stored to/with the Storage API (Chrome.storage.*) and I see no reason why you shouldn't save the preference data to sync storage. That eliminates the need for the backup functionality (unless a user wants to transfer cross browser, that I suppose makes sense).

• Another very quite essential update would be basic onboarding. Even just a mid-sized modal that goes through a few of the core features (adding custom shortcuts, setting a greeting/name, maybe one other thing) is enough to start with. That'll both help the users and yourselves from users asking you (like Is it possible to add facebook to shortcuts  #295, the "!!!" doesn't inspire confidence, the user can't simply know it offhand)

I think that's all I noticed, I think the last note I'd have is - the beauty of open-source is the collaborative and open nature of it which is clear looking at this repo. I'd like to gently encourage some leniancy to request callers (perhaps even some reviewers) - it may be discouraging to see others be dismissed or shut down (even if it's a duplicate request) without explanation. These are people that have gone to the effort of coming to you with feedback. They're the ones you should encourage the most.

• This is a case for onboarding as, again, many users won't know some of the features unless you guide/teach them.

On that note, it's very clear that you're passionate about this, the three of you make a great team.
I can see that this is quite a fresh project, with requests flooding in so I understand why some things are the way they are.

All the best on this - good luck!

[ceskyDJ]

Charming work, @anynomal! You hit the most significant problems the primary maintainers should take care of. I try to take care of texts and Czech translations at least, as I don't have enough time for more. I tried to give them some feedback, too, but in the last few days, I only had a little time for it. I'm glad to see anyone else providing an excellent description of problems from their point of view.