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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!
Sunday, January 17th, 2010 21:10
Excellent, thanx. Added a few.
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 18:40
Great collection, I’ve instaled 8 of them
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 20:43
I think Chrome is still too immature. When I browse this page with it, it crashes. I just got finished developing a site for a charity and I Chrome would not render some pages correctly (nothing complex, mind you, and tabl inside a div) that rendered correctly on all of the other browsers with no issues. I tried the latest beta and that renders correctly, but now I get crashes. Maybe Chrome 5.0…
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 12:40
I would love to move from mozilla… but I’m not sure
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 09:58
It’s always good to have Firefox as a backup to Chrome, but it’s rarely needed. Too bad to hear you had problems. :P
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 00:01
Great post!
I’ve used FF since it arrived and I am finding it sluggish and it crashes :/ I did try chrome but I couldn’t do without my extensions. This post has made me think twice now.
Many thanks and keep up the great work.
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 10:19
It was same with me.. maybe we are using too much plugins in FF, but somehow it’s too slow – with Chrome I have all those extensions..and even better ones..and browser seems to load just fine :)
Thank you!
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 07:19
Firefox with all those awesome, almost necessary extensions is awesome, can’t imagine developing without it. But it’s really sluggish, especially when it comes to js, so for the last few months I’ve been using Chromium for general browsing.
Usually have both open now.
If a full firebug and webdeveloper toolbar is available for chrome I guess I could drop Firefox all together.
I really want to love Firefox, but it’s really using too many resources, htop tells me around 20% cpu, 12% ram for firefox vs 2% and 2% for chromium.
Friday, January 15th, 2010 22:58
This is the reason I didn’t switch to chrome the last time I tried it.
This post convinced me, but the extensions don’t work on a mac :(
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 10:20
oh these are great news! :) So these extensions are available for Mac users now as well! :) Thank you for information, WizardCM :)
Friday, January 15th, 2010 20:28
If only Chrome extensions were available for Mac Chrome…
Sunday, January 17th, 2010 11:15
What he said ^^
Friday, January 15th, 2010 17:30
Great list you put together here. I made this one of my three links for the day on my daily design blog “Design Thought for the Day”:
http://designthoughtfortheday.blogspot.com/2010/01/11-15-smm-you-fear-you-fail-chrome.html
All the best, Ted
Friday, January 15th, 2010 14:32
GREAT article, Dainis! I made the switch long before Chrome even released the Beta version with extensions. I prefer speed and performance any day over addons and certain “luxuries” other browsers, like FireFox, may offer. But when the extensions were made available, I fell in LOVE! It’s definitely the best browser out there and I don’t see myself changing anytime soon. You definitely highlighted some great extensions, most of which I already have installed. Thanks for the post! :)
Friday, January 15th, 2010 13:50
Quoting: “and it’s been released by Google – cannot be bad!”
I beg you not to be fooled by prejudice. Google is not flawless. You should never rely on the company name itself for the products they offer. Google have produced a lot of user-not-friendly, useless, buggy and self-crashing products. Therefore “released by Google – can be bad”.
Google have created some of the most ground-breaking products as well, so “never judge the product by its producer” is my way of thinking.
I am sorry to disagree with you, but for now Chrome has nothing better to offer. It has a long way ahead before proving itself reliable.
Friday, January 15th, 2010 13:26
AWESOME :) just what I’ve been waiting for!!! Thanks for sharing this :)
Friday, January 15th, 2010 20:53
I am now using chrome for general browsing but with these awesome extensions i may be tempted to start using it when developing!
One extra that wasn’t on the list is SmoothScroll, check it out :)
Friday, January 15th, 2010 18:08
What a great list!! I’ve been using Chrome for some time but never knew there were so many useful extensions. Thanks!!
Friday, January 15th, 2010 16:54
I’m working with Chrome since few days and I must say : “I love it !”
This article will be helpfull ! Thx.
Friday, January 15th, 2010 14:31
Yes, same here! Since now I have less time to code myself, I can easily work with Chrome for now.
Oh, thank you – fixed it now.
Friday, January 15th, 2010 04:59
Title is not right! most of these extentions either has an alternative in Firefox or it already exist on Firefox
Friday, January 15th, 2010 12:34
Already use a few of these but will be checking out measure it and resolution test. Thanks.
Friday, January 15th, 2010 02:36
I use seo extension for my google chrome.
Friday, January 15th, 2010 10:12
unfortunately even BETA don’t support extensions for Chrome Mac..
Friday, January 15th, 2010 09:33
good to see how Google Chrome has evolved. I personally stick with Firefox. It has everything I need and I don’t see a realy reason why to make the move.
Friday, January 15th, 2010 00:30
i`ve already switched to chrome from a long time
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….
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Steve
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 22:45
Is there an extension to get the bookmarks to drop down on the left side of the screen? I don’t like the way they have it now, dropping on the right side. Makes it hard to see.
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 19:48
Oh wow, yes really! I will change it soon! :) Thank you for sharing such great bookmarklet!
Eric
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 19:35
You can save ink and paper by using Print Friendly. I wrote a chrome extension that makes it easy to use.
http://erichamiter.com/print-friendly/
Claude Sammut
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:42
mmmm. ….. interesting! Almost all tools needed to switch! Will actually give them a try! Thanks for the update!
Andy Walpole
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:24
Funny enough I was playing around with the extensions yesterday. The only extension that seems to provide something unique to Firefox is Speed Tracer but there is the YSlow and Page Speed extensions for Firefox Firebug. I can’t imagine ever switching over from Firefox to Chrome. Years ago there was an obvious reason for me to change from Internet Explorer to Firefox as the latter was quite obviously a better browser, however this isn’t the case with Chrome. Sure, the JavaScript rendering may be marginally quicker, but Chrome would have to offer something substantially better to entice me to switch. And their extension selection is not going to do that.
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:32
I don’t know maybe from developer’s point of view there is no reason to switch, but for daily internet browsing, tweeting, stumbling – I definitely prefer Chrome as it’s much more intuitive.
I would really suggest for you to put in use these extensions and try to work with Chrome for few days to get used to it, I tried Chrome several times until today after getting my favorite extensions – I found several handy features which made me to prefer Chrome:) Interesting enough!
Chameleon
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:07
I tried to cross over to Chrome and actually spent hours trying to shape it to work exactly like Firefox. There are some things that do not yet have an equivalent functionality in Chrome. Perhaps in time, but right now. And even though I could live without these, I don’t want to right now. So I guess I’ll buy a new PC :D
But awesome post, thanks for these extensions!
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:33
There must be spent some time to get used to and find what you need to work as fast as on FF, and if you do you may do things even faster :)
Took some time for me as well, but Chrome did it ;D
Anne-Marie Kirwan
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:19
I’ve been using Chrome for the past 6/7 months. Although it had some glitches, I instantly preferred it to Firefox as it was quicker. With each update and added extension (especially the IE tab) Chrome has just got better and better and I hardly use Firefox at all now.
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:34
Congratulations, I definitely agree – it’s hard to switch at first, but later it’s just become irreplaceable!
Katrina Thompson
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 13:45
Hi there
This is an excellent post, I’ve been using Chrome for a while now because it’s fast but have missed the tricks from Firefox. These have made my day, I’m such a geek!!
Katrina Thompson
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 14:12
I meant to ask if any Chrome user has had probs with PDF viewing as that is one thing I can’t get my Chrome to do – any advice would be gratefully received as I’ve tried all sorts to fix this. Cheers.
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 15:09
I don’t know about PDF just yet but maybe this Chrome Extension will help –
Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)
Katrina Thompson
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 16:32
Thanks, I’ll give it a go. Apart from testing websites, it’s the only time I use another browser now to view a PDF! Cheers
midlifemom
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 18:24
Upon reading lots of advice, I put Chrome on my new netbook. I was skeptical at first b/c I too am a long time user of FF and I have it ‘tricked out’ to the max. But I was pleasantly surprised to find all of my ‘must have’ FF extensions also available in Chrome. I feel guilty saying this, but I am really getting hooked. B/C of the speed, using Chrome on a netbook is a no-brainer. But, now I am thinking about using it on my desktop and laptop as well. I would add Brizzly (a reader for both twitter and FB) to the list.
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 19:11
Thank you, I will check out Brizzly and consider it :)
Yes, same happened with me, I was very surprised in good way about Chrome as well! :)
Shawn Hooghkirk
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 18:10
Currently I browse the internet with Chrome, but still develop in IE. There’s just no way around it. Although I do wish everyone was using Chrome 100% of the time, I would rather see some healthy competition and innovation (ahem IE).
I’m looking forward to adding a few extensions on Chrome and hopefully it will keep its speed, compared to that of Firefox which bogs down after a certain amount of Add-Ons.
Anyways, thanks for sharing the list of extensions, especially Eye Dropper!
Mark
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 18:01
Hay!
I’m already using it but thanks for sharing a valuable information with us.
Regards,
Web Design Company London
Ecenica
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 16:49
Got excited when I spotted the FireBug Lite extenion – only to get this message “Google Chrome Extensions are not supported on Mac yet. We are working to enable them soon.” Fail ;-(
Dainis Graveris
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 17:12
Yeah, it is a pity..currently Chrome do not support extensions for Mac..it’s strange though.. -1 to Google for now.
Bolero
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 19:34
They do work if you use the dev channel. I am using 4.0.288.1 dev and all the extensions are working. And the version is very stable.
Also, check out Google Mail checker plus. Better than gmail checker. Gives you the ability to del/mark as read/archive in the pop up itself.
Ivan
Friday, January 15th, 2010 09:33
good to see how Google Chrome has evolved. I personally stick with Firefox. It has everything I need and I don’t see a realy reason why to make the move.
Dainis Graveris
Friday, January 15th, 2010 10:12
unfortunately even BETA don’t support extensions for Chrome Mac..
JeKo
Monday, January 18th, 2010 16:43
Great!! finally I can script with Chrome :) Tnx so much
Jacob
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.
Gianni
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…?
Iron
Monday, January 18th, 2010 21:27
Why shoul I use google (!) chrome if I can use SRWare Iron, the Chromiom-Browser without google.
Klyve
Sunday, January 17th, 2010 21:10
Excellent, thanx. Added a few.
Rob Cannon
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 20:43
I think Chrome is still too immature. When I browse this page with it, it crashes. I just got finished developing a site for a charity and I Chrome would not render some pages correctly (nothing complex, mind you, and tabl inside a div) that rendered correctly on all of the other browsers with no issues. I tried the latest beta and that renders correctly, but now I get crashes. Maybe Chrome 5.0…
Tutorijali HDonWEB
Saturday, January 16th, 2010 18:40
Great collection, I’ve instaled 8 of them
weblogix
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.
melbourne beach realtor
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.
edd2266
Thursday, April 28th, 2011 16:20
Pictured Flags Chrome bookmarks button appears, how do you put it?