Except that Chrome users aren't allowed to install extensions from outside the official Chrome extension store anymore (and the ones inside the Chrome app store aren't exactly trustworthy due to auto-update and creators transferring ownership to adware companies - especially small single-site extensions that sell cheaply).
Extensions are not a much better way of doing what CSS is designed to do as its normal mode of operation. Requiring extensions to do this is user-hostile.
As the commit message stated, the current method (of dropping just the right file in a usually hidden part of the filesystem) is fairly user hostile as it is.
Extensions exist which make this significaly friendly to all involved, such as Stylish.
> As the commit message stated, the current method (of dropping just the right file in a usually hidden part of the filesystem) is fairly user hostile as it is.
Right, there should be a basic UI setting to do load an specified stylesheet as the default.
That doesn't excuse removing basic functionality expected of a user agent out of the core and requiring an extensionto provide it at all, especially since that requires reducing security (by extending the number of trusted parties) to use that basic function.
"We didn't expose this basic function well enough by default" is a good reason to improve the UX related to the function, its not a good excuse to make the situation even worse.
Extensions (besides their other issues such as security) are also chrome-specific and require chrome-specific knowledge to write.
CSS stylesheets are nicely portable and should work in any (well, most) browser.
In general, a browser agnostic solution is preferable to a browser-specific solution, if they have the same functionality....
Stylesheets are also arguably much simpler to write, and far more concise for their problem space.
Maybe if user stylesheets didn't exist, you could say it isn't worth the effort to implement them, as javascript extensions are a "good enough" solution for a somewhat rare circumstance. But actually removing the existing, standardized, portable, feature seems a tad bizarre... [It's hard to believe it required much code.]
> In general, a browser agnostic solution is preferable to a browser-specific solution, if they have the same functionality....
This is a great point. If a user went through the trouble of creating custom styles to make certain sites accessible, browsers should follow a standardized way of managing these styles. Just like a user can import their bookmarks when changing browsers, styles should be handled similarly.
It might be extra effort for browsers to handle this uncommon feature, but it is the right thing to do, especially for users facing accessibility issues.
