Normally, they test by running Rubocop with a SketchUp specific gem installed that has rules that apply to both good coding practice and API etiquette in a shared environment.
The rule for proper use of Sketchup::require should is already be in the ruleset.
So it may be that someone was in a hurry and did not run Rubocop on the first two submissions.
* Note that the Sketchup module is spelled incorrectly in the email quote.
Hi Everyone,
Thank you very much for all the comments and suggestions in this thread.
Extension Warehouse completed a painful but necessary code-base refactor over the past couple of years, a program that was completed late 2024. This also involved new e-commerce systems. Most of the improvements will probably not be noticed but were important for us in getting the system up to scratch.
Last year we hired a developer advocate (many of you will have met him) who is constantly soliciting feedback from the developer community.
This year the Extension Warehouse development team has increased in size and we are processing a pile of requests to improve the platform. It’s great for you to share requests here and we are taking note of what customers report as painful aspects of that feature. If you run into issues using it I would encourage you to report them on the forum or in support tickets. We want to fix them.
One of our core priorities is to support the sale of extensions as subscriptions, the absence of which is a major blocker to most developers looking to sell via the warehouse.
In short we’re committed to making Extension Warehouse the best place to find and purchase extensions. We know we have a lot to do but please be assured we are very actively working on improvements.
best regards
Andrew
To begin with a little humor, or horror, depending on how you look at it:
“RunCounterSU”: 4406
I don’t use much of a development environment or even a reload method. When I was setting up, I saw much hubbub about the debugging not working and the Peng Lv VS Code plugin was deprecated. Same with RuboCop. I looked around, saw that there were issues, and passed. So, from my side I ought to have caught the issue and will now look again at installing RuboCop.
At the end of the day, they got it right. I don’t know what happens in the ‘black box’ of the Extension Warehouse/SketchUp/Trimble. I see what, IMO, are valid critiques of SketchUp -removing/moving release notes, inability to set extension icons for the Extension Manager, etc. – but there are also those criticisms/inferences that seem less well-supported. The one I disagree with the most is the general claim, variously expressed as: ‘they don’t give a hoot!’. Not that you are in that camp. Maybe I’m giving too much benefit of the doubt to the back box? 
On the overall topic of the EW needs a little love:
Turnaround time for extension submission to approval/rejection. I’d heard it could take a while (someone mentioned over a month) and that’s a primary reason I didn’t submit anything until recently. A follow-on catch, (that I’d shared with SketchUp when they sent out one of their feedback questionnaires), is that if a bug is found, the developer can be responsive and fix it immediately, but the review might take however long. That could create the appearance that a developer is non-responsive when they are.
Vendor status. When applying to be a developer with EW, the option to become a vendor requires business information. In my case I have a business, but extensions are outside the scope of what’s included in that. So, during the sign-up process, I stopped. It raised questions in my mind as to whether I would be a sole proprietor, need to submit a DBA in my state for ‘Biz Name’, start a registered LLC, etc. Turns out I was registered as a developer anyway. Which is fine (probably good and all I need for now). But if one can be a vendor without submitting business info, that should be disambiguated in the sign-up process. For example, if one can ‘decide later’ it would be good to know that a business domain isn’t required. The reason to be picky about this is that the ‘sole proprietor’ option is the lowest bar to entry. It encourages people to ‘give it a shot’. If they learn that no one will pay for their extension they can switch the extension to free and there’s no overhead (as there is for LLC or even to a lesser extent DBA). Incorporated dev companies aren’t going to have an issue here and can go the Listing Page route anyway.
Donations. Should this be included? If so, just under “Free” (with “Free” button)? If Trimble ‘takes a cut’ then we’re back to more of a vendor model and it would create overhead for Trimble if they used pages that emulate the features of gumroad or lemonsqueezy. If donations are accepted, should those extensions have Listing Pages? It’s my impression that Listing Pages are somewhat discouraged and that they are intended for paid extensions. A simple solution would be to add an “Accept Donations” toggle that can be switched on in EW for individual extensions in “Extension Details” tab. When activated it accepts a url and displays it under the “Description” field, as a sort of footer. Could be PayPal, a website, whatever. That’s basically how some developers do it now by adding their own links. If donations are accepted, the extension is free so the “Free” button stays the same. Aside from setup, it wouldn’t create additional work for the extensibility team.
Trial option. With another toggle, “Trial”, under Extension Details (because Try or Purchase is an option for Trimble Vendors in the “Pricing & Support tab” and those options display the price on the button) paid and free extensions by non-Trimble partner ‘vendors’ could be sorted. The Trial option would change the button from “Free” to “Trial”. Trimble puts the option out there and is then ‘hands off’ and the issue of non-Trimble partner vendors misleading people is resolved.
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I replied to the feedback near the end of the most recent “rebuild”. The feedback was opened “late in the game” when the interface had already been finalized.
This rebuild (as I recall) came as a surprise and Labs participants did not have the opportunity to restress the issues that we had the most challenges with before the rebuild.
I also am destressed to see that three aspects of the EW are either still present or went backward.
The extension version number has been removed from the extension store page proper and now hidden on one the “Release Notes” subtabs. This causes wasted time and more clicks to get at the answer as to “What version is hosted on the EW?”
The extension_info.txt file stills lacks a timestamp (integer seconds since the start of the epoch) entry that can be better used to determine whether the RBZ hosted is actually newer than what is installed in SketchUp.
The splash image with the centered search bar at the top of the landing page takes up too much space. (I gave y’all this feedback during the late “rebuild” on the 3DW and it has the same problem.)
I have a UHD display at 150% scaling and this splash image takes up half of the vertical space! (We must have the option to collapse this splash div to only the search bar at the top of the page. Same for the 3DW!)
And of what is the splash image? Perhaps a wavy ceiling? What does this have to do with an extensions store?
Except that successive Trimble employees have been saying this for twelve years since the EW first went live in 2013.
What is different now that will make us not think that this is just more virtue signaling from the SketchUp team?
I see this mismatch too. The version number is in the [Edit Extension] → Extension File Tab along with Release Notes. But in EW, Version is under the Extension Overview tab and there is a separate Release Notes tab.
The Extension Overview tab in EW seems fine to me and the layout above is ‘cleaner’ without version, but a small display under the title or next or under the “SketchUp Compatibility” field would put that information out front.
e.g.,
SketchUp Compatibility (v 1.0.1)
SketchUp 2024, SketchUp 2023, SketchUp 2022, SketchUp 2021
or,
SketchUp Compatibility
(v 1.0.1)
SketchUp 2024, SketchUp 2023, SketchUp 2022, SketchUp 2021
The version number was previously on the front page in the righthand column. I did not have to go searching for it.
I have arthritis and have in the past suffered from tendinitis in my right arm due to excessive mouse clicking (like 50+ hours a week using AutoCAD.)
Adding mouse clicks is poor UX design, in my opinion.
Weird effect report: grabbing the top of the EW window (launched from SU) makes the arrows and home button disappear.
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Looks like it’s shaping up to be:
Free Extensions (DIY donations)
Perpetual (license) → Trial option (Trimble Vendor Program)
Subscription (license) → Trial option (Trimble Vendor Program)
Listing Page → ??? Perpetual, Subscription, Donations (Trimble Vendor Program, DIY Self-sales, DIY donations)???
That all seems about right. Perpetual and Subscription could have the price and try or purchase buttons. Listing Page requires the developer to write a description. Yes, you have to look at the page but Listing Page buttons don’t display as “Free”. So that would be solved. Since Listing Page info is user-defined, it’s up to them to put correct details about whatever DIY (non-Trimble Vendor) stuff they are doing and the extensibility team doesn’t have to track it. Yes, a bad actor could leave that information out but that would be a great way to earn a bad reputation.
Free extensions are ‘perpetual’ by default (you have it, it’s yours) but you wouldn’t be entitled to updates. A subscription implies -to me anyway- that the software is being actively maintained. Sometimes a subscription ends, and then you can’t use the software anymore. Sometimes it just means you can continue to use it but can’t get updates. The little gripe would be that “Perpetual” implies but doesn’t explicitly state a license is required. I think that’s commonly known (and it doesn’t say “Free”). There’re being categorized as ‘Not Free’.
It looks like the Reset button is being triggered when a search is submitted instead of saving the search until the Reset button is actually pressed. The javascript might be missing a event.stopPropagation(); … actually:
A form field element has neither an id nor a name attribute.
Maybe they just stubbed something new in there and it’s not working yet?
It also looks like the landing page has changed. Some of the ‘featured’ extensions are ‘winners’ or ‘participants’ in from their developer sessions at 3D basecamp, no?
Thanks for reporting this. It’s a bug and will get fixed.
We are all user advocates :-). However we have not had a dedicated developer advocate for SketchUp onboard until now.
Some of you may have noticed that we ran a trial during February of an in-application messaging system that we used to solicit feedback from users of Extension Warehouse.
This has been deployed in other features and is very successful at gathering quantitative feedback from customers and users at scale.
We are working on using this kind of mechanism so that we can triangulate feedback we get in customer interviews and in the forums with what our customers tell us in the application.
Are you speaking of @CraigTrickett ?
What are the duties of a “developer advocate” ?
Was there a formal announcement ?
Hi Dan,
Yes I’m here and always willing to talk to you about any of the problems that you are facing. In fact let’s setup a meeting this week so that we can cover off some of your concerns.
Do you want to drop me a message on craig_trickett@trimble.com and we’ll get something pencilled in?
Speak soon,
Craig
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This is not as easy as it seems. Should we unilaterally change all free extensions? What if they are actually free? Do you know which ones are actually free? What if they have a free and a paid version? How good does the free version need to be for it to be ok to post as free? What if they are freemium? etc
There are over 1,000 extensions on EW. Would you like us to check each one and make a decision? What if we get it wrong? What if this adds loads of time to approving extension reviews?
If/when we change guidelines, then it will take time for all the extensions to change. So it will probably continue to be frustrating for many for a while. I don’t think there is a magic wand here.
Right now I think what’s best for the user is that as many extensions as possible can be found on EW. We would prefer to have some misleading listings than no listings. That does not mean we don’t care about these comments - it just means we’re not rushing into changes before we’re sure about what we’re doing.
We really want to create an environment where people don’t need to sell outside Extension Warehouse. The least friction between consumer and developer is best for everyone. To do that we need to chip away at servicing all the different ways developers want to sell their extensions and as I said in the first response, this is our top priority.
Just let the developer choose the indication of free versus paid. So you fon’t have to ask yourself 1000 questions.
give me two weeks and a decent check and I’ll take care of it.
trimble has a market cap of 17 billions.
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