4 posts tagged with "The Marvellous Suspender"

Had I lost hope? I'll admit it — yeah, pretty much completely. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when I finally saw a light at the end of that tunnel.

Rob is the guy behind The Great-er Tab Discarder, itself a fork of an older, seemingly abandoned project — another extension born out of the need to fix a gap that often makes Chrome unusable in the long run (especially when you're juggling hundreds of open tabs). When Rob took an interest in TMS and decided to take on the challenge of making it compatible with the more limited Manifest V3, I saw an opportunity. I reached out to him, and together with a third person from Google, we kicked off a group chat to start connecting the dots and try to make the leap.

The result? It's publicly available here: github.com/gioxx/MarvellousSuspender/pull/253 (now merged with the original repository) — a pull request that includes a pretty much rewritten version of TMS for Manifest V3. A 1:1 migration of what's under the hood in the current TMS just isn't possible.

What we need now is a pool of users willing to test this new version of TMS — help us figure out what's still missing, what kinds of issues might come up across different environments, systems, and setups, and what needs to be fixed right away before we publish it on the Chrome Web Store. Only then can we reach all users again and start the (long) journey toward improvements and new features, aiming to finally hit full feature parity — something we're still missing today.

A few quick but essential tips before taking the leap. If you're thinking of joining the testing community for the new version of TMS, I strongly recommend you:

• Save the current state of your open tabs in Chrome.
  TMS (the version currently available) lets you create a full backup, which you can export and keep safe.
• Wake up all your tabs (or pick and choose which ones you want to keep active in the browser — you can always reopen the others later). Try to streamline things as much as you can, so the transition to the new version of TMS is smoother.
• Install the new version of TMS.
  Clone the repo to your PC (or download the full ZIP and extract it), enable Developer Mode in Chrome (chrome://extensions/), then hit the Load unpacked button and select the folder where you saved the files from the repo. You have to load only the src subfolder. At that point, you'll be running the new version of TMS — compatible with Google's Manifest V3 — and it'll be back to managing your tabs like before.

What you'll see looks familiar — same interface you're used to, nothing seems to have changed. But under the hood, it's a whole different engine.

Just a quick reminder: using the Load unpacked option won't overwrite your current TMS installation. Chrome treats the new Manifest V3-compatible version as a completely separate extension, so there's no need to uninstall your current TMS — both versions can run side by side.

That's why we suggest:

• Keep your current TMS installed, but set the automatic suspension to Never.
• Set up the new version to handle tab suspension.

This way, you'll be able — if you want — to wake up your older tabs and suspend them again using the new version.

Thanks a ton to everyone willing to test, break things, and share thoughts — this kind of support is what keeps open source alive and kicking.

The time for goodbyes has come. Due to my inability to carry the project forward, and the inevitable future mandatory use of Manifest V3, The Marvellous Suspender is about to sunset.

When I decided to create the fork of the original project in 2021, cleaning up the "inconvenient" code, I published the modified extension for myself and some of my colleagues and friends who had been orphaned by The Great Suspender. I did it without any kind of pretense, I did it because I felt like it and because I already had a developer account available that allowed me to upload the extension to Google's public browser add-on gallery. I blogged about it as well because I thought it might please and be useful to some readers.

But then the unexpected happened: TMS landed on the pages of 9to5Google and from that moment "we were no longer (just) four friends at the bar".

In the meantime, a little over 3 years have passed, and the only new things that moved under the hood involved an experimental version that was not published in the Chrome Store because it might have given disruption to those who had already started using Google Chrome's native tab grouping feature. We fixed bugs, added features but - basically - in the heart of TMS still beat loudly all the code from The Great Suspender. Today TMS has more than 140,000 users worldwide, to all of them goes my biggest thanks for this time spent together.

I would have liked to have done a lot more, believe me, and if only I had had the ability I certainly would have. TMS has been a beautiful and unexpected adventure, I have come into contact with so many new people, and I will treasure what I have learned.

The GitHub repository is totally available to someone with the desire and ability to take the project forward, I will gladly transfer ownership. On the other hand, I will not do anything to damage the project, and I will continue to reject the proposals to purchase the extension that have followed numerous times over the past few years to try to grab as much user data as possible, no amount of money can keep up (although I admit that some have certainly been tempting, no need to deny it). If no one comes forward by the end of the summer, then the project will be archived and made read-only.

In the meantime, I will not remove the extension from the Google store, I will leave it available until Google itself determines that it is time to inhibit the installation of extensions that still use Manifest V2. I recommend, however, that you look for an alternative in the meantime if you want. I can certainly recommend Auto Tab Discard, which I have been using with satisfaction for years on Firefox (you can find his GitHub repository here).

Thank you from the bottom of my heart, everyone.

2021 was a great year for The Marvellous Suspender. Lots of contributions, ideas, bugfixes and even a not-so-healthy dose of Google updates that have put the add-on and all its users in a difficult spot. Today's article, however, is perhaps conclusive unless we find new blood in development and a new starting point to rethink the add-on and bring it into the future, the one necessarily dictated by Google and its Manifest V3.

January 2024​

It is the month set by Google for the removal of all add-ons that make use of Manifest V2, just as reported in the official documentation available at developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv3/mv2-sunset.

What does this mean? The Marvellous Suspender is based on a set of functions and commands that are compatible with Manifest V2, if you do not redesign the add-on and migrate all of its code to Manifest V3, it will be permanently removed from the Chrome Store and you will no longer be able to install The Marvellous Suspender in the future. Users who use it today would see the component stop working, thus losing access to suspended tabs (unless they reactivate all of them before December 31, 2023 and disable The Marvellous Suspender).

Google is talking about an experiment that will result in the deactivation of Manifest V2 already in unstable versions of Chrome (Canary, Dev and Beta versions 112) starting in January 2023, and then extending the experiment to the stable version of the browser in June 2023 (Google Chrome version 115). This translates into possible problems for all users who - at Google's discretion - could be part of such an experiment, going to harm the user experience and tabs suspended by The Marvellous Suspender.

Is there a Manifest V3 version already in the pipeline?​

No.

I don't have the right skills to do this, and the team that inherited the development of The Marvellous Suspender (friends and relatives who develop for a living) invested their limited free time in correcting problems and integrating some new features that have been loudly requested by users via GitHub, as well as keeping up-to-date a multilingual localization that has today brought The Marvellous Suspender to speak 16 languages, a great accomplishment of which I am very proud.

However, this does not distract from the fact that without a source code compatible with Manifest V3, The Marvellous Suspender is doomed to die.

Future​

The source code for The Marvellous Suspender is fully available on GitHub. I am here at your complete disposal to continue coordinating the project if needed and to keep the version available through the Chrome Store alive and up-to-date, which I have not done recently so as not to annoy users who have complained about its insistence on updating the add-on when it detects a new version on the Store (github.com/gioxx/MarvellousSuspender/issues/84). The solution to the problem is already there and integrated into the current code of The Marvellous Suspender, but it is missing some details related to Tab Groups that we wanted to fix before releasing a new version for the Google Chrome Store, thus also pleasing users of the relatively young Chrome feature.

As pointed out in the previous paragraphs, without new blood and capable developers, The Marvellous Suspender is destined to cease to exist, much to the delight of its detractors and the disappointment of all those who have instead made spasmodic use of it to date. Free time is short and capabilities too, the add-on certainly needs to be rethought to meet the directives dictated by Google's Manifest V3, and time moves quickly. To date there is no solution and no financial budget to hire full-time developers to be able to overcome this major hurdle, The Marvellous Suspender is in fact self-funded by myself and the voluntary and free contribution of those who have helped us out over time.

Do you think you can do something to allow the project to survive? Then I'm looking for you. I'm willing to take a step back if you want, allowing you to start your project and give it another name if you feel it's appropriate, as well as to monetize it while trying not to violate the privacy of the users who use it, Trust for me is a key factor and should never be betrayed. I could have sold The Marvellous Suspender to the highest bidder over the past few months (and several proposals came in, believe me) but I never wanted to do that, I don't think it's fair.

I really hope you will want to help me in some way, even if only by sharing this post and talking about it with capable and well-intentioned people who could make the difference :-)

I didn’t think I would ever write such an article, yet here we are. I want to tell you very quickly who I am, what I do and what is happening to The Marvellous Suspender, an extension for Google Chrome that has suddenly come under the spotlight since Google decided to block and "withdraw from the market" the original The Great Suspender. This article is published in Italian and also localized in English to allow all new friends who have landed here to better understand the evolution of history.

Who?​

Giovanni, 35 years old, Italian, System Administrator by trade, curious about the world of development (experimenter in the very little spare time available), all-round passionate about technology, lover of the Open Source world, always engaged with Mozilla Italy in localization and product promotion, I have travelled around the world and met many beautiful people as passionate as I am.

Why?​

For work, I also use Google Chrome and I found The Great Suspender indispensable to prevent the RAM consumption of my work machine from becoming exaggerated. I created The Marvellous Suspender when I started reading about the unwelcome novelty issue in the TGS source code (github.com/greatsuspender/thegreatsuspender/issues/1263). So I took all the good of the original extension (stop on GitHub at version 7.1.6) and I decided to cut out any reference to the statistics and possible malware integrated into the latest version of TGS. Having a Google developer account available, I also wanted to upload The Marvellous Suspender to the Chrome Store.

I did it mainly for myself and some of my friends and acquaintances. I didn’t think The Marvellous Suspender could get so much attention. What happened is something I never expected:

From that moment, I’ve lost count of how many emails, private messages and much more arrived at the doors of my accounts on Social Networks and beyond. I can only thank you all and feel honoured for this undeserved attention.

Future​

Thanks to the help of all of you, The Marvellous Suspender can become what The Great Suspender has ceased to be: a fantastic add-on for Google Chrome and maybe even Firefox soon. I can’t be the main developer of the add-on because, even though I know my way around this world, I can’t bring the skill and ability of a real developer who can improve the original project. But I can make you a promise: I will take care of this add-on over time and make sure that what happened to The Great Suspender doesn’t happen again.

I have already contacted some of my family and developer friends who will help me analyze problems and suggestions trying to do a great job on The Marvellous Suspender. The works will begin in the next few days and we will dedicate part of our time to the project to make it evolve.

I have no desire or intention to sell The Marvellous Suspender, neither today nor ever. The project is Open Source, so it must remain, I don’t care about statistics and I don’t want to keep and sell anyone’s data. I am the first user of The Marvellous Suspender and I want this extension to remain clean, performing, easy to use, suitable for all of us.

Anyone can help out if they have the ability: the source code is the one available on GitHub (the same that I then bring in the ZIP file that I upload to the Chrome Store) and the localization is taken care of through the use of Crowdin.