What am I doing for my extension if it is a change in the pop-up icon or icon, but NOT 48x48 shown in chrome: // extensions is a simple extension for rebooting. if you need to see the 48x48 icon changes, I believe that you need to completely close and reopen chrome (background applications are delayed after chrome closes, such as offline mail or a calendar or documents)
If you change the source code and don’t notice this change by a simple update (perhaps in the case of script content), then I will disable it, and if this does not work, restart the extension, and then close / open the chrome.
This will hopefully give you a few things to try, as I fully understand the pain of removing and then adding the extension, and closing and reopening chrome is not ideal either. To do this, I probably recommend having two Chrome installations, either stable, or Chrome Canary for development, or you can use Chromium for development
There are many options! but separating development from normal browsing is a good idea, just remember to check for a stable build too!
Embedded css (not added to the head of the document) requires closing and reopening chrome (or removing re-adding the extension). A simple update, turning on / off, closing / opening a tab will not be enough.
If you use Chrome Stable, you will not have access to many functions that I use as a developer, for example Chrome Profiles , so I would recommend looking at getting Chromium or Canary for the purposes of the developer, because as a developer you need to close / reopen the browser (since it seems to me that this is easier than reloading the extension)
Supplement 11/30/2011 To change CSS values on the extension tab (options page, everything that appears as a tab), shift + F5 is used in windows, which clears the cache, allowing the display of new CSS. This works in Chrome Canary with the option to disable the cache in proven developer tools.