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My Favorite Chrome Extensions

February 01, 2011

I recently switched to Google Chrome (from Mozilla Firefox) as my primary browser. I still use Firefox when I need to do heavy-lifting web development. Firebug and other addons are simply not (and may never be) available for Chrome.

Here’s all the extensions I’m using. **Note: **I’m not using any web development related extension for Chrome; there are good ones out there, but as I mentioned, I use Firefox when debugging web apps.

  • AdBlock It seems like I’ve used this extension ever since I started using Firefox. For those who don’t know, it’ll block all those annoying ads littered across the internets.

  • Better Gmail While this extension does a lot, I only use a subset of its features:

    • Hide ads (AdBlock hides these ads, but Better Gmail will hide the entire ad column, which allows for more space for your actual email)
    • Hide invite friends field (who actually invites folks nowadays?)
    • Hide web search button (I already have 10 other ways to search google)
    • Add attachment icons (gives a hint as to the attachment file type)
  • Embedly This extension is just amazing. It makes the #NewTwitter even Newer. It ads information to the side panel for almost all types of content. Twitter will automatically do Twitpic, YouTube, etc, but this extensions gets everything. It’s the reason I’m now using twitter.com rather than the Twitter app for Mac.
  • Facebook Photo Zoom Zooms Facebook photos as you hover over them. Saves a lot of time!
  • Fittr Flickr This extension does a lot, but what I use most are the shortcut links for different image sizes, shortened flic.kr links, and quick viewing of image metadata.
  • iReader Sometimes removing ads on a page still doesn’t remove all the noise to make an article readable. That’s what iReader is for.
  • RSS Subscription Extension RSS subscription isn’t baked into Google Chrome, so this extension is a must-have.
  • Type-ahead-find A feature built into Firefox (known as Quick Find) is not available in Google Chrome, but Type-ahead-find is Chrome’s Quick Find equivalent. Without this extension, I would have not been able to switch to Chrome from Firefox.