plugin

Four 'plugin' stories July 2014 - December 2015

Google launches Unity plugin to help developers make Chromecast-compatible games

Stephen Hall Dec 3 2015 - 2:57 pm PT

Google has today launched the Google Cast Remote Display plugin for Unity, in hopes that developers will now be able to more easily bring their mobile games to the TV. This is the same plugin that many games on the Play Store — including Monopoly Here & Now, Risk, and more — already use…

Today we launched the Google Cast Remote Display plugin for Unity to make it easy to take your Unity games to TVs. The Google Cast Remote Display APIs use the powerful GPUs, CPUs and sensors of your Android or iOS mobile device to render a local display on your mobile device and a remote display on your TV.

Google says that, as of today, developers can download the new Remote Display plugin for Unity from both GitHub and the Unity Asset Store.

Developers with preexisting Unity games simply need to import the Remote Display package to their project, add the CastRemoteDisplayManager prefab, and configure cameras for the local and remote displays. More detailed information can be found at Google’s Developers Blog.

Google’s new Microsoft Office plugin allows users to open and save Drive files

Tom Maxwell Jul 21 2015 - 10:56 am PT

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Google has a new plugin out for Microsoft Office (Windows only, for now) which makes it possible to access files stored in Drive from Office and save edits back to the cloud storage service, as well as create new files in Office and save them directly to Drive. The plugin works with Word, Excel, and Powerpoint (2007, 2010, and 2013 versions), and Office 365.

Here’s what saving a new document looks like in Word once the plugin is installed:

This plugin isn’t anything monumental, but Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity applications still has an undeniably significant hold on the corporate market. By making Drive more interoperable with the suite, Google can ease people into trying its cloud-based applications for getting work done, initially by pushing the benefit of Drive for sharing files with teams, and easily accessing files across devices. It’s a strategy Google’s competitors have claimed to use to gain a foothold in the corporate world – get enough average employees in a company using your product for some of their needs, and eventually IT will budge and consider switching over for everything. Google has a website up dedicated to the new plugin.

How to overcome tab overload in Google Chrome using Tab Wrangler

Stephen Hall May 8 2015 - 11:29 am PT

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Tab overload.

One of the things I struggle with on a daily basis—and forgive me, I know it’s a first world problem—is an overload of Google Chrome tabs. I have a bad habit of just opening countless new tabs without even thinking, and I’m really bad about managing them and closing the ones I’m no longer using. Chrome just makes it way too easy to end up with a few dozen tabs open, while only actually using a few.

I figured it wasn’t possible that I was the only one that struggled with this. With just a quick Google search, I found a free Chrome extension called “Tab Wrangler” to help rectify the situation. It’s a nifty little plugin. Without hardly any set up, it will help manage your tabs for you and close the ones you don’t need—and it will even keep you updated on your negligence with a little red badge telling you how many tabs it has closed for you…
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Hangouts in Chrome without plugin rolling out to Google Apps users today

Jordan Kahn Jul 23 2014 - 7:14 am PT

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Hangouts-click

After announcing late last month that video calls for its Hangouts service in Chrome no longer require a plugin, Google is today rolling out the change to Google Apps users as well.

The change means that users attempting to make a video call from Hangouts using their Google Apps account will no longer be prompted to install a browser plug-in for Chrome. Now, users will only have to grant permission to their computer’s mic and camera to initiate the call (as pictured above).

Following this update, when users try to start a video call for the first time, they’ll see a message underneath the address bar asking for permission to access their computer’s mic and camera. If they want to change their choice later, they can change it from the address bar in Chrome… We recommend users familiarize themselves with this change before seeing the prompt.

The change first launched in the Canary and Developer builds of Chrome and later to all users in the public, stable release of Chrome, but today arrives for Google Apps users.