-# newtab
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+After Google changed the new tab page of Chrome to an ugly array of circular icons (around mid 2016), I looked around for a better new tab page extension. The best I could find was [Start Clean](https://startclean.github.io/), but it had several issues (I don't remember exactly - I think there were various bugs). A fork of Start Clean by [shadowfax](https://startclean.github.io/) fixed some small issues and added the favicons which was rather nice, but for some reason (???) this fork makes links open in a new tab.
+
+Initially I forked shadowfax's version to make links open in the current tab. That worked fine for a while, but I have since rewritten the extension to have much more flexibility in adding/removeing links and categories. The UI is also much improved. Here is a summary of the changes I've made:
+
+* Links open in the current tab
+* Background, foreground and hover colours are configurable
+* Removed ueslesss search bar and apps sections (all I want is links to common sites)
+* You can now have as many columns of links as you like
+* Added new "edit mode" where you can rearrange/add/remove/rename columns
+* Added basic keyboard shortcuts & tab indices
+- Uses browser-default sans serif font rather than locally packaged font
+- Improved settings UI
+- Much cleaner code (well, it is Javascript after all)
+
+## Installation
+
+This extension isn't available on the Chrome Web Store because I can't be bothered figuring out how that works. To install it as a local extension, download `bin/newtab.crx` then drag it onto the extensions page at <chrome://extensions>. Developer mode must be enabled on the extensions page before doing this.
+
+Also, opening the file using Chrome's file handler causes a "CRX_REQUIRED_PROOF_MISSING" error because I haven't updated the manifest to CRX3 (that's on the todo list). So for the moment you have to drag and drop it onto the extension page and that seems to bypass the verification. More info [here](https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/3125155?hl=en).