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Cover image for What are some Browser plugins that you can't live without ?

What are some Browser plugins that you can't live without ?

Pritesh Usadadiya on February 22, 2019

We all need toolkit that makes our jobs a little bit easier. As a QE there are several chrome extensions that i use everyday that boosts my product...
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Meghan (she/her) • Edited

All browsers should come pre-installed with uBlock Origin.

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Quentin Sonrel • Edited

I used to have a LOT of browser extensions but now I try to keep only to a few ones, currently on my Firefox:

  • uBlock Origin, for ad blocking
  • HTTPS Everywhere, the name says it all
  • FoxyProxy, for proxy switching (with automatic rules)
  • Bitwarden, my password manager
  • Text Contrast for Dark Themes, to fix input fields when using a dark GTK theme (Linux)
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Pritesh Usadadiya

I used to have a LOT of browser extensions but now I try to keep only to a few ones

same here, i got rid of lots of extensions which i was using occasionally. Now i keep only few handful of them which i use everyday.

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kinghat

off topic, but how did you quote that?

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Pritesh Usadadiya

Just go to new line and add > and your quote.

> This is that awesome quote. 

here is a quick Markdown Cheatsheet

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kinghat • Edited

Text Contrast for Dark Themes, to fix input fields when using a dark GTK theme (Linux)

is this with firefox or chrome?

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Al Romano • Edited

Typically I'm using Chrome Canary for development and these are my must-have plugins I sync across all my accounts,

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Jonathan Kuhl

I should have mentioned JSONView in mine.

It makes working with REST APIs so much easier by presenting JSON in a more readable format.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

A very good collection. Specially Funkify and Spectrum. they are definitely going into my accessibility testing toolkit.

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Evan

Generally Useful

ContextSearch web-ext

Select text and search from the context menu or a tiled popup using any of your installed search engines.

Drag-Select Link Text

Easily select the text in links. So damn useful when you need to copy and paste some text that is part of a link!

Gesturefy

Mouse gestures to control the browser. Less moving hands between mouse and keyboard.

New Tab Override

New Tab Override brings back the ability to change the page which is shown when opening a new tab.

Textarea Cache

Automatically save the content in a text input field. Saves you having to retype it when a web-site barfs and the text would be otherwise lost.

Remove annoyances

I don't care about cookies

Get rid of annoying cookie warnings from almost all 'infected' websites!

Make Medium Readable Again

Improves the Medium reading experience, ruined by user engagement tactics.

Neat URL

Neat URL cleans URLs, removing parameters such as Google Analytics' utm parameters.

Unstick!

Click the toolbar button, and any element with 'position: fixed' is removed from the page. Clears up pages cluttered with frozen headers and share buttons. (For some reason, I usually have to click it twice for it to have an effect.)

A bit more specialist, but useful to some

Bookmark Tab Here

Adds context menu item 'Bookmark Tab Here' to Bookmarks Menus as an alternative bookmarking method.

Easy Youtube Video Downloader Express

Seems to be the best of the add-ons to download video from youtube.

Feed Preview

Because RSS feeds are not dead.

Firefox Multi-Account Containers

If you have multiple accounts on the same site, then this can really save you having to log out and log in again to switch accounts all the time.

Markdown Here

If you are a markdown aficionado this lets use write in markdown then click a button to toggle to formatted. Useful for web-based email (gmail, etc) and other sites like blogger or wordpress.

SiteDelta Watch

Regularly monitors a page for changes.

More developer specific

Empty Cache Button

Toolbar button to empty the browser cache.

Html Validator

HTML validation inside Firefox. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon and details in a developer tools tab.

Open With

Quickly open current web page in another browser.

Security/Privacy

uBlock Origin

Repeat after me, it is not an 'ad blocker', it is a HTML firewall.

Bitwarden Passward Manager

The best password manager IMO.

Cookie AutoDelete

When a tab closes, any cookies not being used are automatically deleted. Whitelist the ones you trust while deleting the rest. (Note: It can generate strange behaviour on some sites, or pop-ups that normally only show once will repeat.)

Decentraleyes

Protects you against tracking through "free", centralized, content
delivery. It prevents a lot of requests from reaching networks like
Google Hosted Libraries, and serves local files to keep sites from
breaking.

HTTPS Everywhere

Enables HTTPS encryption automatically on sites that are known to
support it, even when you type URLs or follow links that omit the https:
prefix.

Privacy Badger

Automatically learns to block invisible trackers.

Others I haven't used by are on my list to try

HTTPS by default

Request websites over secure https by default from the location bar instead of insecure http.

Facebook Container

Prevent Facebook from tracking you around the web. The Facebook
Container extension for Firefox helps you take control and isolate your
web activity from Facebook.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

Wow! that's a very long list Evan. going to need my Tea for this one.😄

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Jonathan Kuhl

Vue, Augury and React Dev Tools.

All three of those make debugging those frameworks soooo much easier.

And Vue is the best of them. It watches your $emit events, it keeps track of Vuex, it shows you your props and state. I love it.

Outside of web dev, I also use LastPass to keep my passwords managed. Though I'm finding Firefox and Chrome are quickly making it more redundant.

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kinghat

are you using the extensions reloader url to automate the reloading?

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Solomon

Yep! Especially when the extension icons don't update after I enable/load an extension (which I think is unintended behavior), I just go to reload.extensions and everything works as intended!

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kinghat

well i mean are you tying it into a save trigger by your code editor or something? id like to set that up somehow.

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Solomon
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kinghat

tyvm!

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Anna Simoroshka

uBlock Origin
React Developer Tools
ColorZilla - color picker from anywhere on the page
Grammarly - better spell and grammar checker
Inifinite dashboard - I use it to have only a nice image and nothing else on the new tab
LastPass - password manager
Appear.in screen sharing - for my service of choice to make video calls
GitHub SLOC - shows the number of lines in a repo, somehow, to me, it feels important :)
Toolkit for YNAB - youneedabudget.com is an amazing budget planning tool, this is an extension to make it even better
Evernote Clipper - not sure yet about this one

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Pritesh Usadadiya

I have heard good things about youneedabudget.com. didn't know they had chrome plugin.

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Anna Simoroshka

I think it's not theirs, it's an independent thing. It adds some nice UX tweaks to the webapp.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

thank you for the info @simoroshka

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Milo de Vries

Is shameless self promotion ok if it's to fight climate change? Using co2ok.ninja webshops pay to make your purchase there climate neutral (shipping and production). Also, we finance projects that not only directly reduce emmions, but also help people in developing nations.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

yes it is. cool website with noble concept. Great work Milo

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Milo de Vries

Thanks! It's hard work, we're currently having a bit of a rough patch (among others is surprisingly hard to get press/influencers). Little things like your comment are what keeps me going.

💚🌍

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Adam Brandizzi

Funny, I have no development-oriented addon on Firefox! That's what I have:

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Pritesh Usadadiya

great stuff. you are heavy on how you surf web. :)

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Tammy Lee

I love Privacy Badger! I still have Greasemonkey installed, too.

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Terence Lucas Yap
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Pritesh Usadadiya

i'm curious. where do you use Allow-Control-Allow-Origin: * ?

if you don't mind.can you provide some working applications/examples ?

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Terence Lucas Yap

It's for testing Rest APIs on localhost. Our enterprise system disabled CORS. This tool allows for a quick hack.

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Glenn Carremans • Edited

Standard Adblock Plus and 1Password.

The last couple of months I added these 3 dev related extensions.

Refined GitHub

Browser extension that simplifies the GitHub interface and adds useful features

CodeCopy

A browser extension that adds copy to clipboard buttons on every code block

JSON Viewer

The most beautiful and customizable JSON/JSONP highlighter that your eyes have ever seen.

Btw these are all open source so you could always contribute improvements.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

i am sold on JSON Viewer and CodeCopy. definitely gonna try.

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Jack Harner 🚀 • Edited
  • LastPass - Password Management
  • uBlock Origin - Ad blocker
  • Pushbullet - Moving files/texting/notifications to and from my phone and all my computers (The Desktop App works much better than the extension)
  • Material Color Palette - A little self promo, but I use this extension daily to quickly access Material Design color codes.
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K

The Grammarly plugin is rather nice because I'm not a native speaker.

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Tammy Lee

I'm a native speaker and I use Grammarly all of the time! :D

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Carl Saunders

I'm currently using the following extensions:-

Redux Dev Tools - React debugging tools to the Chrome Developer Tools

axe - Accessibility testing in Chrome Developer Tools

VisBug - Open source browser design tools

Sizzy - Tool for developing responsive websites crazy-fast

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Pritesh Usadadiya

axe seems cool. how does it compare to WAVE ?

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Carl Saunders

Haven't used WAVE, so can't give a comparison. All I can say is axe is really good.

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Chris Stringer

CSS Reloader - reloads page stylesheets without reloading the page itself, highly useful especially when designing for SPAs or other instances where full reloads reset the application state.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

I thought only Hugo can do that. this is very useful for designers.

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Stas Arshanski

I work with a lot of tabs while reaearching multiple subjects. I use 2 extenstions for that:
Toby - to save tabs or sessions by name and reopen the interesting tab in the future.
The ability to save the whole window tabs as a folder is super cool.
Tab mem free- to crush tabs that are not used and clear the resources usage. Enables work on a lot of tabs on any computer.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

i was looking for something like Toby. thanks for sharing Stas

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p-mcgowan

I like to keep it slim - ublock and adblocker on firefox and chrome, lastpass, and the only other plugin I use is one I made for running bookmarklets.
Basically everything else I need is a bookmarklet on a per-use-case basis.

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Austin Standing

My most recent addition and current favorite is Dark Reader.

Dark mode for every website. Take care of your eyes, use dark theme for night and daily browsing.

I've gone through a few others like it, but this is the best I've found for what I'm looking for.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

didn't know about Dark Reader. a useful addition 😃

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Jake Prins

I've made a Chrome extension and I can absolutely live without it, but wanted to share it anyways: RaterFox

It changes your boring new tab to a nice screen with a background of a popular movie, including some information and links to instantly watch a trailer. On scroll your screen turns into a simple and clean feed of the most popular movies, TV shows and games. See the average rating and know in an instant which movies, TV shows or video games are worth your time. Click the title to read a short summary and watch a trailer.

Some other Chome extensions I use a lot:

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James Livesey

AdBlock!

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James Livesey

(I guess it isn't really integral to work, but is really useful when you're trying to see something without ads flashing up in the way.)

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Pritesh Usadadiya

yes, In general i am fine with ads, just not too much of it.

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James Livesey

Yeah I agree. I keep ads unblocked on mobile too. (Partly because I just like using Chrome and not any 3rd party AdBlock browser, but also it gives some people some money for making a good website!)

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Mike CK

Whatfont if my favourite! I use it to steal borrow design ideas. They say nothing is new on the face of the earth.

Also Alexa's seo thing. Helps me hunt related resources and note the reputation of a given website.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

They say nothing is new on the face of the earth.

They are right Mike 😏

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Ibrahim A.

Using these 3 on a daily basis:

AdBlock

LastPass

Fake Data

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Pritesh Usadadiya

Fake data can be a good addition in exploratory testing.

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Sunil Kumar

There's a chrome extension which helps to store frequently used data like email, password, username, credit card number, cvv etc and access them to fill forms on any webpage on the internet. Since the data is encrypted and stored, there's no need to worry about other applications reading your data. The extension is very handy.

chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...

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locness3

Refined GitHub. It adds so many features to GitHub, and they're so greatly implemented I almost forget sometimes that I have it.

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Ondrej

I have found Shodan and Wappalyzer really useful.

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Pritesh Usadadiya

Wappalyzer is good tool to find few useful things websites are using under the hood.

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Ondrej

Yes, of course it's not always 100% correct and you could guess it directly from the source code, but it's handy extension to have.

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Chardenal Matthieu

Vue DevTools / uBlock / XMLTree

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Bob Nadler

Create Link (Chrome) - Allows you to create custom link formats. Very handy.

 
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Al Romano

Probably because they know someone will make an extension. :D

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Tammy Lee

I can't live without Workona!
I have never been able to context switch faster between tasks!

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manuel
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Nucu Labs

AdBlocker and PrivacyBadger

 
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James Livesey

Yeah could be a good option

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Jash Sayani

All the ones published by EFF.

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Yankee Maharjan

Wappalyzer, to see what technologies the site is built on.
Grammarly and Dark Reader.

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Ranjithkumar Matheswaran

My favorite is OneTab. It helps you to organize and save the tabs.

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Ben Sinclair

The dev tools that are built in to most browsers offer most of the features of the other extensions you suggest out-the-box.