Imagine logging into any service on the web and being told that it’s probably a good idea to stop using a browser extension that you’ve installed. That’s what happened to one of our faithful readers, Derek.
The Missing e Chrome extension, which has a name that pokes fun at Tumblr’s lack of a second vowel, adds a ton of functionality to your experience on the social blogging platform. It’s quite popular too, with the Chrome Web Store reporting 258,408 users.
When Derek logged into Tumblr today, he was greeted with this overwhelming pop-up:
In the prompt, the company says that it loves developers who create add-on experiences for its site, but it creates issues that are a “burden” on its support staff. In particular, Tumblr says that Missing e may cause data loss, privacy, and performance issues that it can’t support. It sounds like one of those TV commercials for medications where they rattle off all of the side-effects they may cause.
Third-party extensions and hacks are a part of the web, perhaps Tumblr should focus on building new features or its own official “app store” instead of whining about support and server issues.
you don't "Tick the box and you're done."
this message pops up every time I log in and sometimes just returning to the dashboard. I'd appreciate the warning if they gave it once, not fifty times a day every day for the past weeks. I'm now downloading ANOTHER extension just to get rid of the repetitive warning because it's starting to feel like harassment.
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Like"I got the same pop-up from Tumblr and uninstalled Missing E. Frankly I've had quite a few server issues lately and wanted to see if this cured any of them ...
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LikeEric Cabot Steed I'm sorry to say that server issues are ENTIRELY Tumblr's fault, and have nothing to do with any browser extension.
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LikeThat's beyond ridiculous, Tumblr should have done with Missing e the same thing Twitter did with Tweetdeck: buy the application, improve and implement stuff to improve the online experience. That's part of the reason I left Tumblr months ago, the new version of their site being less easy to use.
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LikeDoesn't sound like too bad a warning? I'm not incredibly well educated in the technical stuff behind these extensions, but it looks like a pretty reasonable explanation of what can happen when you use this stuff. You don't care and want to keep using it? Tick the box and you're done.
I can picture Tumblr support being buried under support requests due to bugs with this apparently very popular extension, and as a consequence not getting into the stuff they *should* be offering support for: Tumblr's own services. If that is the reason then a warning like this is not such a bad thing...
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LikeOr they could just make changes that would intentionally break it since screen scrapers suck, are fragile, and should only be used as a last resort. Tumblr has a very rich API that "Missing E" could use if they wanted to re-create the Tumblr interface instead of hacking up the page.
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LikeJosh Einstein Almost all of Missing e's features violate Tumblr's over-reaching API license agreement. That means using the API is out of the question. Regardless, very few features use page scraping, and all of them fail gracefully.
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LikeJosh Einstein It's no coincidence that Tumblr once made a fuss with Jeremy Cutler (the guy who replied to your comment) about Missing E's violation of its (honestly crappy) API license agreement, leading Jeremy to have to rewrite almost everything and axe some features (like the unfollower checker). I'd say Tumblr is becoming more and more of a d*ck.
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