Help! The only way that Chrome allows userscripts to be installed now is by downloading the file to my local system then dragging and dropping it into the extension manager interface. However when I try to drag it over, nothing happens!
I've tried using the file managers in both Gnome and KDE environments, neither one works.
For some reason, the drag-and-drop mechanisms in both Nautilus and Konqueror do not work properly with the extension manager in Google Chrome / Chromium. I've found two solutions:
To force the issue, you can use an alternative file manager. I found that the one from the XFCE project called thunar works for me and can be run inside of either Gnome, KDE or your favorite DE/Window Manager. There is almost certainly a package for it in your favorite distro.
Another handier solution is to use an extension for Chrome specifically designed for managing userscripts. The builtin extension manager is tailored very closing to the Chrome store and not well suited for userscripts at all. Anything you install as a userscript will not sync with your Chrome profile and must be updated manually. There are several extentions specifically designed for managing userscripts, the one I use now is called Tampermonkey. With that enabled, userscripts may again be installed with just a click from the source, and they also sync across my different systems.
If you've just downloaded the user script and its name is appearing in the bottom bar, open the Extensions page (Menu > Tools > Extensions, chrome://chrome/extensions/), then drag-and-drop from the download bar to the middle of the Extensions page. (Thanks to balpha for this method.)
If you've got the script on your system somewhere, you can use dragbox to make it available for drag-and-drop:
dragbox foo.user.js
Drag the file into Chrome's extensions page.
Alternatively, you can allow extensions from other websites through a custom ExtensionInstallSources policy, to be set in /etc/opt/chrome/policies. There's a bug with respect to userscripts as of Chrome 21, though. Another method is to pass the --enable-easy-off-store-extension-install option when you start Chrome. See How to install a private user script in Chrome 21+? for more information.
