As everyone much be aware by now, Google Chrome for Mac Beta was released today, as well as the Linux version. So did Chrome extensions, but much to everyone’s chagrin, extensions have not been built in the Mac version of Chrome yet (why?)

At the same time, Google announced the Speed Tracer Chrome Extension today, which aims at identifying and fixing performance problems in web applications. This will be a nice new addition in my web development toolkit arsenal, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Turns out that it requires a bit of trickery to make this work, so here is the lowdown if you want to make this work on MAC OS X:

• Download a Chromium nightly build that supports extensions (mine is 34076).
• All Chrome Extensions will be off limits even in Chromium (the button is disabled to install them). Fortunately, Matt Mastracci, the founder of DotSpots - a nice extension - has created a simple bookmarklet that turns on the “Install” button for any Chrome extension. Thanks!
• After activating the “Install” button, go ahead and install Speed Tracer
• You need to enable the timeline API inside Chromium, and to do so you must use the --enable-extension-timeline-api flag when starting the app. To do so, launch Chromium in command line by typing /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium --enable-extension-timeline-api
• Voilà! Play nicely with Speed Tracer!

Now, Google, build the extensions inside Chrome for Mac, and we’ll all be happy campers :D

UPDATE: After a moment, I got tired of losing a Terminal window just to run Chromium, so here’s an alternate command to fire it up: open /Applications/Chromium.app --args ‘--enable-extension-timeline-api’

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