Google Chrome has a whole bunch
of extensions meant to make browsing the Internet better, faster, and more
secure. But which ones do you really need? Start with these nine.
Released in September 2008, Google’s
Chrome Internet browser has wasted no time in dominating the Web. It was
swiftly adopted by users looking for a cleaner, more intuitive interface for
visiting their favorite websites. By May 2012, Chrome hadsurpassed Microsoft’s
Internet Explorer, claiming 310 million users and nearing 40 percent of all
Internet browser users.
Today, according to W3Schools, a popular web developer information
website, Chrome users make up 54.1 percent of all Internet users who visit a
major browser (a list which also includes IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera). It’s
a rate that continues to grow.
For most, it’s a simple user
experience. You open your browser, check your email, maybe read The Daily
Beast, check Facebook, and sign off. But for some Chrome power users, like
yours truly, there exists a suite of available Chrome extensions that can make
all the difference.
I’m here to tell you my favorites.
Simply download these nine Chrome extensions to hack your Internet browsing experience and make
it better, faster, and more secure. And if you’ve got a few favorites of your
own, I’d love to hear all about them in the comments.
The pitch: “Enjoy surfing the web
without obtrusive ads cluttering your screen!” Adblock Plus is probably the
first extension I ever downloaded for Chrome. As someone who is visiting
various websites all day long, this one’s a must-have. Said to be the world’s
most popular browser extension, the open-source Adblock Plus will block those
pesky YouTube video ads, Facebook ads, various web pop-ups, and any intrusive
banner you get sick of seeing on your favorite websites. Now we at The Daily
Beast are in the ad-supported publishing space, so tools like Adblock Plus
actually might keep some dollars out of our pockets—and so I probably shouldn’t
even be telling you about this—but this extension is too good to keep from you.
More than 10 million fellow users agree.
The pitch: “The best way to save
articles, videos and more.” I used to be a diehard Instapaper user, which let
me take the longer-form articles I wanted to read, on the road, so I could read
them during my evening commute home. Pocket has the same functionality, but
more. With Pocket, you can save entire web pages, videos, and tweets. All the
content is displayed beautifully on any devices—it works particularly well on
my iPad—and is synced from desktop to smartphone in real-time. I also really
like the tagging feature, which lets me group #recipes together, or #sports
reads, for easy discovery later down the road.
The pitch: “Enlarge thumbnails on mouse
over.” Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Reddit, Flickr, Amazon, Netflix, Google; the
Internet’s biggest websites are full of thumbnails—those tiny photographs that
usually give way to bigger photographs if you click on them. The idea behind
the Chrome extension Hover Zoom, then, is to make seeing those images a heck of
a lot more simpler. Just mouse-over. The thumbnails are enlarged when you move
your mouse over each photo, meaning you don’t have to click and open a new page
to see it in full size. It’s nice. And it’s really sped up my consumption of
photographs on image-heavy websites. I love Hover Zoom.
The pitch: “Autosaves everything you
type so you can easily recover from form-killing timeouts, crashes and network
errors.” Lazarus is a god-send. I couldn’t guess how many times I’ve been
filling out some form on the web only to have my browser freeze, or my cat
accidentally hit the refresh button, only to lose it all. Thanks to this handy
extension, that’ll never happen again. Working silently in the background,
Lazarus auto-saves everything you are typing just in case you happen to lose it
all. It’s all encrypted, and is saved locally on your machine, according to the
extension’s listing.
The pitch: “Encrypt the Web!
Automatically use HTTPS security on many sites.” Every time you visit a website
your computer communicates with a web server on the other end, which is hosting
the website. Unless you’re using your email, a bank’s website, or, say,
Twitter, the exchange point between your computer and the server is mostly
unsecured. Using HTTPS, however, changes that, and makes sure your information
is protected and encrypted as you happily surf across the web. Released by the
non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, in partnership with the Tor project,
the extension promises “it will protect you against many forms of surveillance
and account hijacking, and some forms of censorship.” Bonus: Aaron Swartz, the
open-Internet activist who tragically took his own life in January of this
year, gets a “special thanks” from the EFF for his work on the extension.
The pitch: “Protect your privacy. See
who’s tracking your web browsing with Ghostery.” They know when you are
sleeping. They know when you’re awake. They know if you’re being bad or good on
the Web for goodness sake! Want to know who “they” are? Ghostery makes that
possible. Ghostery, the company says, sees the “invisible” web. This means the
extension helps you detect all the various “trackers, web bugs, pixels, and
beacons placed on web pages by Facebook, Google Analytics, and over 500 other
ad networks, behavioral data providers, and web publishers” that follow you as
you surf. And in doing so, Ghostery gives you the ability to go dark—or at
least helps you watch the watchmen.
The pitch: “Save up to 95% memory and
reduce tab clutter.” I have a confession. I am a chronic sufferer from the
too-many-tabs-ititis. What’s that, you ask, healthy Web surfer? A clear
indication of my disease is that within minutes of firing up my Internet
browser my screen is riddled with as many as 45 “tabs” in the same window. It’s
habit. I open one, then open another, then another then another then another
and before you know it I’m up to my neck in resource-draining nonsense I’ll
never actually read. *takes breath*. That’s why I have OneTab, which converts
all those nasty tabs into one easy-to-manage list. You should have it too.
Trust me.
The pitch: “View definitions easily as
you browse the web.” The Google Dictionary extension is pretty
self-explanatory. You see a word, but are perhaps unclear as to it’s meaning.
And so, you highlight it. Bam! A pop-up appears with the full definition, an
option to hear the word pronounced, and a link for “more,” which leads to the
word’s definition in the context of Google’s search results. It’s an all-around
minimally-invasive plug-in that’s endlessly helpful for people who do a lot of
reading on the Web. Next time you encounter
“pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” you’ll know exactly what to
do.
The pitch: “LastPass is a free online
password manager and Form Filler that makes your web browsing easier and more
secure.” LastPass is a dream come true. We wouldn’t want to know how many hours
of our lives we’ve spent filling in the same credit card number, the same
shipping address, our phone, email, password, again and again and again, every
website wants the same exact information! With LastPass, that problem is no
more. The free extension stores this information locally on your machine, where
it’s encrypted, meaning not even LastPass knows what’s being entered into those
forms. If you do a lot of online shopping, or signing up for new Websites, this
extension should most definitely be in your toolkit.
Those are the nine I’ve been getting
the most use out of these days, but there are many, many more. If you have an
extension you’d love me to try, leave a note in the comments. I’d love to know.
A special thanks to the Redditors in this thread, who got me thinking of doing this post, and John
Corpuz, over at Tom’s Guide, whose 40-strong list proved
a valuable resource in compiling this shortened group of nine.
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