I have been using Google Chrome for 95% of my daily web browsing for about a month now. I love its simplicity, lack of clutter, huge speed increase over Firefox, and its other unique features. The only thing I've been missing from Firefox is the same thing everyone else wants - EXTENSIONS!

Pretty much the ONLY reason I even open Firefox anymore is to browse YouTube and use extensions to download HQ and HD videos. Then I discovered the Chrome "dev" channel and the new ability to create simple extensions for Chrome.

I decided to write my first Chrome extension and to make it a YouTube download helper, since I couldn't find one anywhere that did what I wanted.

When I browse YouTube, I like to (1) see the highest quality video possible and (2) download the highest video quality possible. I also like to (3) keep my downloads organized and named intelligently (not the default video.mp4 or video.flv that most download helpers provide). These were the basic things I wanted to achieve with my extension.

I'm assuming all of you reading this already know that you will need to be using the DEV version of Chrome (currently 2.0.174.0) to use extensions. I also assume you know how to install them.

1. You must be using a Chrome "dev" version.

http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel

2. You must edit your Chrome shortcut path to look like:

"C:\Documents and Settings\Francesco\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --enable-extensions --load-extension="C:\Chrome Extensions"

3. Download my code here:

http://www.blackcoil.com/Chrome Extensions.zip

and install it to C:\Chrome Extensions on your computer. Feel free to change the path if you want, just remember to change it in the shortcut path too.

Now browse to a YouTube video page. My extension only affects pages with the path:

http://www.youtube.com/watch*

It does a few things for you:

1. The extension checks to see if an HQ (fmt=18) or HD (fmt=22) version is available, and if it is, the extension makes sure the highest quality video loads on the page.

2. The extension adds a textbox to the right of the video and fills it with a nicely formatted file name for your video in the format:

username - title.mp4

instead of the generic video.mp4 filename most download helpers give you.

3. The extension adds a "Save" link to the right of the textbox that, when clicked, will get the highest quality version of the video and open a download window for you to save it to your computer.

Therefore, the easiest way to use the extension is:

1. Load a YouTube page for a video you want to download.
2. Click the textbox with the pre-built friendly file name and the entire name will be selected.
3. Press CTRL-C.
4. Click the "Save" link to the right of the textbox.
5. A download window will pop up. Select where you want to save the video.
6. Click in the download window where it says "video.mp4" and use CTRL-V to replace "video.mp4" with the friendly video name.
7. Press enter and begin downloading!

If you have any suggestions, let me know. I have some more features in mind, and of course, there is some fine-tuning I can do. If there are weird characters in the video title, you may need to remove them manually. I will fix the Regex to replace those with empty spaces soon.

Francesco