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I’ve always been using Firefox browser, I mean already for 5–6 years and never thought I would want to choose something else. Firefox is great browser and what makes it so great is all those thousands of plugins you download freely. You can find now plugin for almost everything you could ever think of – there is only one big downside. Firefox is much slower than Chrome and actually eat’s more of computer’s CPU than other browsers.
I have a friend who suggested to try Chrome again and I thought I will give it a try – now I will check how much and how good extensions Chrome has and is it enough to transfer now???
This article will try to answer to question – can designer, web developer, social marketing, SEO person actually transfer to Chrome without any loss of extension features. Are there something similar to FireBug, WebDeveloper, Color Picker, SEO For Firefox, Alexa ranks, debugging tools, which can be replaced to be used daily?
Let’s put Chrome on test – shall we?
If you know a little about Google Chrome read our previous article about this browser features – Google Chrome Review.
Take a screen capture of the visible portion of any web page and it will open in an editor where you can crop it, add text and arrow markup, get color information or move around areas. You can easily save it to your desktop or host it online. The extension also lets you quick launch any of Aviary’s web editor design apps. View extension screenshots by clicking on the thumbnail and using the arrow keys.
Backup and sync your bookmarks across computers and browsers. Xmarks is also available for Firefox, Safari and IE.
Since I am working on one computer at work and laptop, I love this automatic tool syncing my bookmarks and allowing me to worry about other things.
Block ads on websites. Supports EasyList and many other ad blocker filter lists.
Evernote’s Web Clipper extension let you save interesting stuff you see on the web.
LastPass is a free online password manager and Form Filler that makes your web browsing easier and more secure.
This extension auto-detects RSS feeds on the page you are reading and upon finding one will display an RSS icon in the Omnibox, allowing you to click on it to preview the feed content and subscribe. Very handy extension for daily blog browsing.
Allows you to execute common commands (like page forward/backward, close tab, new tab) by mouse gestures drawn over the current webpage, without reaching for the toolbar or the keyboard.
If you don’t know how mouse gestures work, check out this video.
Discover webpages similar to the page you’re currently browsing. I understand this extension works similar like StumbleUpon, but it’s more objective because it’s based on Google search engine and it’s been released by Google – cannot be bad!
Here I tested it on my own website and got 4 very popular design blogs displayed – first test looks good, I am trying it more definitely.
A magazine-like startpage. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services. Provides seamless integration with Google Reader, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube and Amazon.
Very simple and clean Delicious extension allowing you to simply bookmark page to Delicious. This extension adds just one button, without whole bookmark bar, I loved it!
Google Quick Scroll is a browser extension that helps you find what you are searching for faster. After you click on a Google search result, Quick Scroll may appear on the bottom-right corner of the page, showing one or more bits of text from the page that are relevant to your query. Clicking on the text will take you to that part of the page.
Displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox. You can also click the button to open your inbox, very handy tool for daily browsing.
Chromed Bird is a Twitter extension that allows you to follow your timelines and interact with your Twitter account.
Extension which lets you read your Facebook news feed and wall. You can also post status updates.
Simple StumbleUpon toolbar for Chrome, you should be very familiar with it if you are stumbling daily.
goo.gl url shortener is an extension which allows you to shorten the current website URL with the new Google URL Shortener service http://goo.gl/.
Many other extensions of this type – in other browsers – simply complicate this task, using really extensive code, XHR, etc. The main purpose of this one, is to use the less amount of code (and also memory) and help the developer/user to get the job done.
Great and simple classic Lipsum extension, required in every designer’s toolbar.
Firebug Lite is a tool for web developers, that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
A Google Chrome extension useful to inspect the meta data found inside web pages, usually not visible while browsing.
Post and coloring source code (C, Python, Ruby, HTML, CSS, …) on a pastebin service. Although useful for the share on the forums, IRC or social networks (like Twitter).
Get insight into the performance of your web applications.
An extension for developers to test web pages in different screen resolutions, with an option to define your own resolutions.
Provides various ways (customizable keyboard shortcut, floating button, or auto-copy) to copy your selection WITHOUT formatting.
Use Internet Explorer to display web pages in a Chrome tab. Some sites can only be displayed using IE, and with this extension you can now see those sites without leaving Chrome. Great for web developers who want to test the IE rendering engine, users who use sites with ActiveX controls, and users who want to use the explorer view for local files (i.e. file:// URLs).
I couldn’t live without great SEO tool, where I could see stats of current page I am visiting, this tool is under development still, but already it’s very lightweighted, fast and working just excellent.
“The Google Chrome SEO extension provides easy access to Search Engine Optimization Tools that can help you with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Checks and other daily SEO tasks.”
Very simple and light extension which only task is to display pagerank automatically while page loads. For advanced browsing I would use Chrome SEO, but for automatic,fast stats display I like this plugin in my Chrome Extensions as well!
SitezMeter displays traffic charts from Google Trends, Alexa and Compete side by side, as well as ranks. This extension is a handy tool to webmaster, web site owner and SEO/SEM specialists.
Of course, you can go to SitezMeter website directly, but this helps sometimes to do it faster in handy way, anyway – your pick!
Chrome Flags displays a country flag indicating about the physical location of the websites you’re visiting. The extension also provides access to detailed information regarding the website’s servers, owners, traffic and trustworthiness.
Eye Dropper and Color Picker extension which allows you to pick color from any webpage or from advanced color picker. You can also check option, that selected color HEX code will be automatically copied to clipboard. This tool is even more handier than ColorPicker on FireFox, because HEX code I needed to copy/paste manually.
Draw out a ruler that will help you get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.
Yes, this popular Firefox extension for designers is available on Chrome as well! Great!
I didn’t know there are already built in features for web developers, but wow, there is – and you don’t need to install anything.
This “Inspect Element” feature works similar like Firebug, but it has different features. Just select and element, text you are interested in, click right mouse button and check inspect element – you will get advanced and precise results right away! Very, very handy!
Read more about built-in features for developers in this google guide.
While testing all those different extensions, what I enjoyed the most – extensions are super easy and extremely fast to install/uninstall/activate. I was used to Firefox restart browser statement all the time, I never really thought about it. With Google Chrome you just click on install button and extension is live and working in seconds without any slow downloading or restarting, lagging. And in the same time, if I decided not to keep that extension, I could easily uninstall it as well without any problems.
I am amazed, it took me so long to try Chrome extensions, because I thought there could be nothing better then Firefox, all those thousands of plugins it has and there no way Chrome could compete with something like that EVER.
Dear readers, I was very wrong – of course, there aren’t so many extensions available just yet, but already all of them works way better, way faster and for now I haven’t got any problems with Chrome at all – just big, positive surprises.
For designers and developers I would suggest to give Chrome a try and check out design related extensions, there are already. They aren’t so much but already very handy and fast to use, which usually wasn’t the case with Firefox however.
Huh..but for daily browsing, tweeting, stumbling, mail management, blog writing ( yes, I mean all bloggers) – I suggest to switch to Chrome today and give it a chance. Try it for 3-4 days, install several your favorite extensions from this list and I am pretty sure, you will not want to go back to Firefox for daily browsing. Just my personal opinion, but I was very strong Firefox lover until yesterday, so there must be something good with this new browser I think :)
Let me know about your pros,cons and experiences with Chrome comparing it to Firefox! Let’s go to browsing!
You can download latest Chrome version here, but you need to install Google chrome BETA version in order to use and try extensions as well – get it here.
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Dainis Graveris is 23 years old blogger and designer, founder of 1stWebDesigner, now more silently managing everything behind the scenes. He usually hangs out in Twitter tweeting design related links and chatting with people. If you have any questions or feedback that's the best place to start! Cheers!
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 07:16
Very informative post, i was known to some of the extensions before but thanks for sharing more, i really like the Google Chrome for its performance.
Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 12:45
Dainis,
On the one hand, your article gives some interesting information on Chrome extensions.
However, your article reads like an advertisement for Google. From my point of view, it sounds like you are getting paid by them. Everything is ***GUSHING***.
If you don’t want it to sound like an advertisement, you might want to put in a few negatives on Chrome. For example, Chrome does not let you turn off automatic updates in the browser (You can regedit them but regedit is not for casual users). This means that your extensions may stop working when you really need them because Chrome was updated but the extension authors have not yet updated their code to be compatible.
Summary: Your point of this article is on the extensions. Those extensions may stop working at any time when Google does an automatic update on you.
Thursday, April 28th, 2011 16:20
Pictured Flags Chrome bookmarks button appears, how do you put it?
Saturday, October 30th, 2010 19:40
Chrome extensions are also *much* easier to write than Firefox extensions. I was having a problem where I kept opening all the same site in different windows, so I pulled up the extension API and was able to bang out an extension in under 6 hours!
Here’s the extension for anyone who’s interested:
Only One – https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ffkdlcmdgpagmbokblekleghfkjgpjdo?hl=en
Friday, September 24th, 2010 16:47
Firebug sucks in any browser other than firefox. I won’t change to chrome, and I’m not planning to leave firefox any time soon, most of your suggestions, are firefox plugins also, I really can’t see a reason why to move on Chrome, other than google saying so :P
Friday, February 19th, 2010 15:02
This is not a list of 30 irreplaceable Chrome extensions, as most of these are either available in other browsers or have similar counterparts available for other browsers. Rename it or find other extensions.
Monday, February 8th, 2010 12:18
Very useful, thank you. Definitely, a + is the easiness of installation and starting to work with.
The only app that didn’t work for me is GoogleLike. Strangely gives me all 4 pics of my Uni website – no matter which blog/site I try to “googlelike”.
Otherwise – perfect. Also, I use Chrome Themes :)
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 23:50
Very useful post for those who are about to switch just like me.
I’ll probably leave Firefox for testing until somebody ports Web Developer, Firebug full version and Live HTTP headers (or anything similar) to Chrome.
Thanks!
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 18:20
I haven’t tried Chrome yet but it looks interesting. I’m happy with Firefox and all those extensions you listed that are functional to my needs are available for Firefox. My only question, does Chrome open faster than Firefox (after computer start up is complete)? Firefox takes a minute or two to open after start up on my comp.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 15:18
Even i used to use fire fox for a long time, but as google chrome came , it was really good.easy to handle.It is not hard to browse and the history also easyly visible to us, no need to type the entire url or save in the history and all. The screen of your required site which are used resently are will be visible so that you can browse them easly.
Friday, January 22nd, 2010 00:32
nice list, I have been using both browsers but now that I can install extensions I might switch to Chrome for good…?
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 22:36
i love chrome. I think what really sold me was the extensions. I used to waste all kinds of time on social network site like facebook and twitter, but with these extensions I never have them on my mind so that I can focus on my coding. I have a different facebook ext. tho. Mine is pretty much the touch version of facebook in a small window.
Monday, January 18th, 2010 16:43
Great!! finally I can script with Chrome :) Tnx so much
Monday, January 18th, 2010 21:27
Why shoul I use google (!) chrome if I can use SRWare Iron, the Chromiom-Browser without google.
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Stu Greenham
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 12:42
Great post! I have missed a few that you mentioned and will check them out! I also would recommend the Pendule extension which has some great tools for web developers!
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 12:47
I will definitely try out that extension and consider about adding it maybe to this article! Thank you for support!
*Added extension 31
Checked out – great addition, similar to web developer tool in firefox! Thanks!!
Alice
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:50
Great post! I’ve been thinking for a while now to switch to Chrome but I kept thinking about all the extensions I have installed now that I could not replace on Chrome, but there you go. I’m definitely going to make the step. Thanks!
designi1
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 14:01
I used chrome for a while with no extension so this article will be my guide for this week.
chrome: did not so excited about it. At the start i couldnt open my gmail acc with chrome… and so many other sites. Now seems everything is fixed. Going to try some of this. thanks for share!!
Smashing Share
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:10
Great article Dainis. The future is Chrome definitely. Thanks for sharing these extensions.
Ray
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 20:49
So far so good, but once you have installed a few extensions and opened a couple of tabs …go have a look in the windows task manager and see the number of processes spawned by chrome…with two tabs open + 7 extensions I have 12 chrome processes running in my PC using up more than 220 MB memory.
In chrome each tab is a process and so as google says ‘one tab crash does not crash the browser’
Evil Mammoth
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 19:59
I was skeptical about switching to Chrome myself, and I still think there are a couple of things it doesn’t do as well as Firefox. PDF handling has been a problem, though with the right extension, this is now working for me. Otherwise, Pendule is an excellent extension for Chrome, but I have yet to see a developer extension even get close to being as good as Web Developer for Firefox. The ability to use the right-click menu to carry out all the actions offered by the plugin makes it, by far, the most versatile and intuitive plugin for inspecting CSS, HTML, and page elements. Its keyboard shortcuts also prove very convenient.
Perhaps I’ve missed something with Pendule.
That being said, I do think Chrome [4] is now a legitimate contender to Firefox, though it does prove almost as resource heavy in XP. It runs much more efficiently in Windows 7.
Nice article. I have downloaded many of these extensions already but you’ve pointed me in the direction of a handful of them that sound interesting.
Evil Mammoth
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 22:09
I forgot to mention as well that Firefox’s application handling is still far superior to Chrome’s. There is no easy way in Chrome (as far as I can tell, anyway) to configure how the browser handles different filetypes. Some of this is covered by extensions, but there should be a way to configure these settings in Options.
pablo
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 20:12
Do these extensions slow down performance? I am not yet decided to use some of them because of this.
Simon
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 12:47
Good article. I’ve been experimenting with Chrome plugins for SEO for a while now, and these are good choices.
Personally I’m loving chrome and only use Firefox for SEOQuake (which I’m on the Beta for in the hope of getting an early Chrome verison) but is there anything that you desperately miss from Firefox?
Designers-House
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 14:36
what a great post !!!
i never thought that i can find all this extensions for Google chrome , really amazing post but i am still with Firefox til Google makes it open source , and a more little thing Firefox faster that Google chrome in browsing
Brad Sherrill
Friday, January 15th, 2010 03:07
I was waiting for the developers toolbar that I use with Firefox to be available for Chrome, but I’m still gonna take the plunge. Thanks for the compilation
Lowes Coupon
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 21:31
Now that I have read this I might actually use Chrome! Most of these extensions I was unaware of and the reason why I stick to Firefox….
Dumm
Friday, January 15th, 2010 00:30
i`ve already switched to chrome from a long time
nietzsche
Friday, January 15th, 2010 00:48
I feel like I’m being a cheating husband. I love Firefox, but now and then I can’t help but sneak a day or two away using Chrome. Firefox welcomes me back when I start developing again, but I feel so guilty! I’m still on the fence. Should I leave her and run off with Chrome? Will I realize too late that I should have stuck with Firefox, only to understand that its doors are closed, and it’s now out of date and rarely maintained? :(
chris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 15:47
you can also sync your bookmarks in your google apps account which would eliminate the need for a third party bookmarking system
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/08/sync-google-chrome-bookmarks.html
and there’s an AdBlock extension, which a lot of us old FireFox user will recognize for ad blocking
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
i’ve been using chrome since they first released it publicly and have slowly phased out my usage of firefox. i was a firefox devotee, as well. now i only use it to test webpages or for the one or two sites i go to occasionally that don’t play nice with webkit.
i find the built-in developer tools (they’re in safari, as well…it’s a webkit thing) to be an invaluable resource and i use it daily when i’m coding a website. i honestly don’t know how i survived without it, i use it so much. the only thing i could wish for is an extension that adds the same sort of user agents that safari has that allows it to emulate an iphone/mobile browser.