This blog is a personal writing project, and is mostly aimed at helping me practice my technical communication skills.
The focus of this blog is to write about the technical communication profession in general and UX writing in particular, as well as to write about the topics that are important to me personally.
Table of Contents
Chrome Extension For Website Details
We’re expected to perform so many tasks daily, from organizing our content buckets to ensuring a website’s usability to link building to much, much more. It’s a lot — but there is good news. There are a variety of Google Chrome extensions that can make these tasks a lot easier.
Google Chrome has gobbled up a substantial market share. As per Stats Counter, Google Chrome has more than 66% of the total market share.
I assume many of you are also Google Chrome fans. But, have you explored the powerful extensions and Chrome shortcuts the browser has to offer?
At the click of a mouse button, you can install an SEO plugin and open doors to higher productivity levels. Some Chrome extensions are pure gold with value-adding functionality that can save you hours of tedious tasks every week. Ultimately, the goal is improving ranks, including Quantcast Rank, specializing in audience measurement.
In this post, I’ll share 15 best Chrome extensions that are useful for marketers. I’ve organized the post into three sections – content organizing, on-page SEO metadata, and usability analysis, and link building and outreach management.
Let’s dive into the first section and look at the first tool.
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Best Content Organizing Chrome Extensions
Information overload can be really stressful. Wading through truckloads of web pages to find relevant and high-quality pieces is daunting.
information overload chart for chrome extensions post
But it need not be that way. These two Chrome extensions will help you organize your content and save it for reading later.
- Evernote Web Clipper
Evernote has powerful note-taking functionalities. Search Engine Land describes it as a “business-to-individual” media tool.
But if you are particularly interested in saving articles for reading later, the web clipper is a handy tool (located in the upper right side of Chrome).
evernote chrome extension
While surfing the internet, you can take specific search results and use the clipper to save articles in three ways – entirely, in a simplified version, or even specific parts of an article.
This is great because a site’s Quantcast rank may change, making the content more difficult to find later.
chrome extensions example
The webpages are added to your Evernote account, so you don’t have to go back to the search engine.
You can further organize them into notebooks and also assign tags (or remarks so that searching later will be easier). You can even highlight particular information if you want to. Evernote is a very popular browser extension.
chrome extension evernote screenshot
You can also right-click on a page and use the clipper’s menu in the toolbar.
chrome extension evernote
By using the options menu, you can also customize the keyboard shortcuts for its prominent functionalities.
chrome extension evernote screenshot
The tool has a specialized saving feature for clipping from Gmail, LinkedIn, Amazon, and YouTube. You can selectively clip the portions you want.
chrome extension evernote screenshot
Here is a video walkthrough of saving Gmail messages using the web clipper. The tool even includes the attachments while clipping.
All of your saved articles will be synced across all your devices and can be accessed through your Evernote account.
The most useful feature I find in the clipper is its powerful image editing and annotating software Skitch.
It’s handy for creating images for your blog posts. You can use it to take screenshots, pixelate a certain area in them, and add custom text.
chrome extension evernote skitch screenshoot
You can also mark up using different colors and visual callouts to draw attention to specific elements on a page.
chrome extension evernote skitch highlight text
- Pocket
This is another useful tool for saving articles and videos to read later.
Once installed, you’ll see the pocket icon in the Chrome toolbar located at top-right.
chrome extension pocket screenshot
Like web clipper, Pocket also has the functionality to add tags to make it easy to explore and retrieve stories once pulled out of search engine land.
chrome extension pocket screenshot
The best part is that your articles and videos will be available on all devices for reading later. So you can read articles in your leisure time, even on its mobile app.
When you open a story for reading, you’ll see a stripped-down basic version (distraction-free) of articles. This reformation makes the reading experience clutter-free and pleasant compared to the ad-bogged search engine view.
The service recently launched a recommended feature (refreshed throughout the day) that shows articles based on your saved article sources and reading habits.
chrome extension pocket screenshot
You can save the recommended articles you like to your reading list by clicking on the save button.
chrome extension pocket example
On Pocket’s iOS and Android mobile apps, you can even listen to your saved articles using Text-To-Speech (TTS).
You can start reading anywhere, skip paragraphs, and even change the reading speed.
You can also add stories from RSS feeds directly into your pocket account by integrating it with Feedhuddler.
And if you’re a fan of marketing automation, then you’ll also like Pocket’s integration with tools like IFTTT, Twitter, Feedly, and Buffer.
Your productivity levels will shoot through the roof. With just five minutes of casual browsing, you can use an IFTTT recipe to schedule articles on your social media accounts for a week.
Here is the IFTTT recipe for integrating Buffer with Pocket.
And if you’re the super-organized geek type, you may like combining pocket with Evernote to create an organized system.
You can save any interesting article you find around on the web (from feeds and social media) to pocket.
Once you scan these articles, only store the most valuable ones permanently in an Evernote. This way, your Evernote account will remain a long-term clutter-free place to hang out.
chrome exentions pocket and evernote how to combine with IFTTT
For sending articles from Pocket to Evernote, you can either use the “Send To” button or this IFTTT recipe.
On-page SEO and Usability Analysis Chrome Extensions
Sometimes you need to perform a quick analysis of your (or a competitor’s) website pages without logging into a tool’s website. This provides useful metrics in how you compare in search engine land.
A Chrome browser extension can help you achieve this goal without any hassles.
Let’s look at a few useful ones.
- Google’s PageSpeed Insights Chrome Extension
A one-second delay in your website loading time decreases your conversions by 7%, page views by 16%, and customer satisfaction by 23%.
chrome exentension stats
Google included site speed as one of the 200 signals in its search ranking algorithm back in 2010.
Monitoring your server’s response time is important for your business.
It’s even more critical if you get a major chunk of mobile traffic. Being a more distracted medium, 40% of mobile users will abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.
chrome exenstions website speed image
Google PageSpeed Insights is a great tool to explore your website’s usability. It identifies elements that are leading to slow loading time and a poor mobile user experience.
google chrome extension page speed insights
To get started, you need to install the plugin.
After your website’s analysis, you are presented with recommendations to fix issues and lower your website’s loading time on desktops and mobiles.
Brenda Barron, a WordPress enthusiast, rigorously tested her website with different WordPress plugins and manual optimizations to boost her PageSpeed Insights score. Her goal was to get a 100/100 score (or the highest possible) using Divi.
Look at her initial score on her new WordPress installation (Twenty Fifteen theme) on a shared server. It also shows recommendations to fix the slowing issues. The loading speed will also help redirect duplicate content to a canonical URL of preference.
chrome extension site speed screenshot
After numerous plugin changes, including installation of a speed booster pack, WP Performance Score Booster, WP Super Minify, and others:
She managed to boost her score to 93.
chrome extension google site speed screenshot
Here is the combination that worked for her.
chrome extensions site speed tips
If you don’t want to go on a manual plugin installation and fixing issues spree, you can automatically use PageSpeed modules to optimize your website.
Let me show you how with a live case study.
Matthew was initially using a non-responsive WordPress theme that led to poor mobile search results performance.
Google PageSpeed Insights showed a score of only 56, along with elements that needed fixing.
So he switched to the native twenty fourteen WordPress theme. It is responsive and performs well on most platforms.
Look at his score post-changes.
chrome extension site speed mobile screenshot
As you would expect, even Matthew’s page speed score was just 64.
chrome extension site speed rating
But instead of fixing issues individually, he used the PageSpeed Module for nginx.
He shares the technical details of how he re-compiled nginx with the PageSpeed module in this article.
After this installation, he achieved a PageSpeed score of 100 (on both mobile and desktop).
chrome extension site speed screenshot
- Redirect Path
I know that many of you might be afraid of technical terms.
But even if you’re not a coding geek, you need to understand the basics of website redirecting. It will help in the overall Quantcast rank of your web pages.
Redirecting is important because web pages keep moving to new locations and deleted during website migrations, redesigning, etc.
And a simple redirect determines if link juice is passed from a removed URL to a new page.
chrome extensions redirect plugin
Redirect Path is a redirect checker that flags URLs with their HTTP status codes – 301, 302, 304, 404, and 500. You don’t need to check them manually.
The tool shows you all the redirects from the URL you entered to the final URL.
google chrome extensions
Once you install the extension from the Chrome store, it’ll start appearing next to the address bar at the top.
google chrome extensions for SEO installation
And if the extension finds any redirect errors, the icon will change (as visible below).
chrome extensions redirect
On clicking the icon, you can get full details about the redirect chain.
chrome extensions redirect screenshote
Want more details about a particular item in the path?
Then click on it to see additional HTTP headers sent (like server types, cookies, caching, etc.) and the server’s IP address.
chrome extension redirect path
A great way to discover backlink opportunities using the tool is to follow the redirect chain and find the backlinks to individual pages.
You can also use the tool for auditing your redirects after a site migration to review how you fare in search engine land.
- Mozbar Chrome Extension
It is one of the oldest and most popular marketing software programs on the internet.
chrome extensions mozbar
It instantly hit chords with marketers because it streamlines your SEO efforts while surfing web pages.
At the click of a button, you can access important metrics about a webpage like its Page Authority, Domain Authority, Link Profile, Keyword Highlights, etc.
chrome extensions moz bar screenshot
The tool works in two environments – in SERP as an overlay and as a toolbar when visiting a website. There are different features in both modes. Let’s explore them both.
When you’re in a search mode and Google a keyword, the bar will give detailed statistics for all the SERP ranking websites.
Here are the results for the keyword “content marketing tips.”
Look at the metrics like domain authority and page authority (metrics below each result). They help you determine the difficulty in ranking for the particular keyword often used in SEO meta tags.
google extensions DA screenshot
You can also export the SERP results in a CSV file.
google chrome extensions screenshot
If you visit a website, you can use Mozbar to do a deeper analysis of the webpage, including its page speed, alt text, SEO meta tags, headings, markup, etc.
chrome extension screen shot
If you buy a premium subscription, you’ll also be able to see a keyword difficulty score in SERP at the click of a button.
chrome extension keyword difficulty screenshot
- Page Analytics by Google
Would you care to understand the user behavior on your website?
Then page analytics is a great tool to delve into how your customers are interacting with your website.
chrome extensions google insights
The tool gives you useful data like where your users click and the number of active visitors in real-time.
chrome extensions page insights
For the clickable areas on your page (like links and buttons), you can even see bubbles showing the percentage of visitors who clicked in that particular place.
chrome extensions analtyics screenshot
The bubbles are of different colors (red, green, blue, or orange) based on their relative percentage of clicks.
And you can filter the page to show only bubbles above your set click threshold.
chrome extensions clicsk
The tool also shows your usual Google Analytics metrics like Pageviews, Unique Pageviews, Average time on page, and Bounce Rate (you need to login to your analytics account before accessing information).
You can also analyze up to four segments with different scorecards for each and compare time ranges.
chrome extensions google analytics
By analyzing the places where your users are clicking and engaging the most, you can optimize your design accordingly.
- SEO Quake
Touted as a Mozbar competitor, this is another popular SEO browser extension tool that shows important SERPs metrics.
Instead of launching and using its own metrics, the bar shows the standard Alexa Rank, Page Rank (PR), and some other important SEO parameters.
chrome extensions SEOquake screenshot
Here is a look at the SEO Quake bar in search mode.
The results show varied info about SERPs, including info on backlinks, whois info, PR, traffic info, number of pages indexed, domain age, and Alexa rank.
chrome extensions seoquake example
You can export the SERP data from SEO Quake in a CSV file too.
You can also use the extension to perform a deeper analysis of the webpage you visit. You’ll get information on the keyword density, links, social shares, and SEO meta info.
chrome extensions seo quake example
A word of warning:
Google hasn’t updated page Rank since December 2013, and as per John Mueller, Google probably won’t update Toolbar PageRank in the future.
Even the tool’s backlinks data is from publicly reported Google and Bing/Yahoo links (which aren’t updated frequently either).
So you shouldn’t rely exclusively on SEO Quake data for devising your SEO strategy.
- SEOInfo Chrome Extension
This is an all-inclusive SEO powerhouse with a wealth of data.
It’s invaluable to understand performance data, AMP status, errors for HTML pages, invalid canonical, hreflang, AMP version, and structured data.
After installing the extension, you’ll start seeing a camera icon like this:
chrome exetensions SEOinfo
If you want to perform a deeper analysis of a website, you need to click on this icon. You’ll see the main dashboard:
SEOinfo chrome extensions example
It will show you important website vitals, such as speed, whether your page is indexable, mobile compatibility, AMP status, language, and more.
Four other pages dig into structured data, links (internal and external), resources, and an overall audit.
This provides a wealth of information about the overall health of your website. You will need to connect to PageSpeed Insights to run the audit.
- Majestic Backlink Analyzer
This is another popular and powerful link intelligence tool.
The tool creates a quick way to see important backlinks info about your webpage (or a competitor’s webpage).
It does not rely on third parties for data. It uses Majestic’s very own trust metrics: trust flow and citation flow.
Haven’t heard of Majestic’s trust metrics?
Here is an explanation of the trust ratio (= Trust Flow / Citation Flow) by Majestic.
The tool has three important metrics tabs – Summary, Backlinks, and Anchor text. But a free account will only allow you to use the summary tab.
The summary tab gives an overall strength picture of the webpage.
It shows the following metrics: citation flow, trust flow, external backlinks, referring domains, backlink history chart, referring domains chart, and link profile.
google chrome extensions majestic
The backlinks tab shows citation flow, trust flow, anchor text, and source URL of the 10 strongest backlinks to the page.
Google chrome extensions majestic
And the anchor text tab shows detailed information on the number of referring domains and other parameters for the 10 strongest anchor texts.
google chrome extensions majestic
The tools tab is for switching to other Majestic SEO tools like the site explorer, backlinks history, and more.
The last is the options tab. You can go there to connect your Majestic account to the browser extension.
You’ll also see a battery near the options tab. This shows the resources depleted from your main Majestic account.
google chrome extensions battery counter
- Ubersuggest Chrome Extension
Ubersuggest is our keyword research tool that provides a wealth of information about keywords, including new keyword ideas, content suggestions, and other insights to help you gain a competitive edge.
And, now there’s a Chrome extension that makes this tool even easier to use.
chrome extensions ubersuggest
Simple download the extensions, and you’ll see an orange “U” in your Chrome bar. Perform a search in Google, and Ubersuggest will provide a ton of information, including organic monthly traffic, backlinks, related questions, and more.
chrome extensions ubersuggest screenshot
It also provides the average CPC and total monthly searches for that key term. This information can generate content ideas, plan PPC campaigns, and guide your SEO strategy.
If the sidebar doesn’t provide enough info, click “Get more insights” to be taken to the main tool website.
You can also use the plugin to check on your competition. Go to your competitor’s website, then click on the Chrome shortcut for information about that site’s traffic, top keywords, backlinks, and SEO ranking.
google chrome extensions ubersuggest competitor screenshot
Link Building and Outreach Management Chrome Extensions
One essential, non-scalable, and probably the most value-adding task of a professional SEO is performing outreach and building relationships.
And it’s a vital part of building editorial backlinks that matter in today’s SEO landscape.
But sending 100 emails does not sound fun. So outreach is generally viewed in a tedious, boring, and uncreative light.
Here are five Chrome extensions to streamline your outreach, save you time, and make your outreach more convenient.
- Ninja Outreach Lite
Ninja Outreach is in itself a powerful prospecting and outreach CRM with a database of over 4 million influencers.
The extension is like a freemium version of the tool to mine tremendous data. Once you install the extension, you can use the ninja icon Chrome shortcut to start finding influencers.
chrome extensions ninja outreach
The information available through the tool includes full name, location, social media follower counts, email address, Alexa rank, backlinks, page authority, domain authority, and more.
chrome extensions ninja outreach
It even includes links to key pages – contact, about, resources, guest post pages. As well as the monetization method of websites.
google chrome extensions ninja outreach
The RSS Feed tab shows the latest posts from the blog’s feed with the author’s name, date of publishing, and the number of comments on the post.
google chrome extensions ninja outreach lite
The demographic tab will show you key information on website visitors, like their locations, daily pageviews per visitor, bounce rate, and much more.
google chrome extensions percentage of visitors
The tool’s pro version also allows you to autofill contact forms and leave notes for each website (that will be cached later).
google chrome extensions autofill contact info
If you’re planning to launch a guest blogging campaign or build relationships with influencers soon, then the extension can be convenient.
- Scraper
This is an effective data mining tool that can streamline your online research efforts. It copies links or similarly structured content from a webpage that you can later export to a Google document.
Here are the three steps to scrape data using the tool.
Step 1. Select some content from the table/chart you want to scrape.
Step 2. Right-click your selection and choose “scrape similar” from the drop-down menu.
google chrome extensions scraper
Step 3. You’ll get a list of similarly structured data in a new window (the scraper console). From the window, you can either copy the content to your clipboard, or you can export the data to a Google document.
google chrome extensions scraper screenshot
You can use the tool to quicken your link prospecting efforts. Let me show you how.
Suppose you want to get a list of potential link opportunities in your niche. So you curate blogs from Alltop.com. Or, you perform a Google search “list of [your niche keyword] blog” (set Google search to return 100 results).
You can copy right-click on just one URL and scrape the whole list. Then you can export them to Google docs and remove duplicates. Remember that duplicate content can be used but should be redirected to a canonical URL not to anger the spiders.
Here is a breakdown of the technique by Matt Gratt.
- Link Miner
No SEO should doubt that Broken Link Building (BLB) is an extremely effective technique to up your website’s authority.
But it’s a lot of hard work. You first need to find broken web links on a website in your niche and then send 100s of emails to website owners.
Link miner is a simple yet handy tool to conduct page analysis while executing BLB.
At the click of a button, it’ll crawl a webpage and find (mark) broken links on it.
google chrome extensions find broken links
It also pulls additional statistics about the broken link. You get details like the number of referring domains, total links, social media shares, and even the top five links.
google chrome extensions link metrics screenshot
You can also get the link data right next to the status code of the link.
google chrome extensions link miner
Want to record this data?
Then the tool can also export the information about the links in a CSV file.
google chrome extensions link miner download data
While doing a Google search, the tool can also determine the number of inbound and outbound links for each result.
google chrome extensions search example
You can customize the way you want it to work under settings by clicking on the gear icon.
google chrome extensions link miner customize screenshot
You can choose the metrics you want the tool to show: status code of working links, Ahrefs metrics like backlinks and referring domains, and more.
google chrome extensions lnke miner point blank SEO ss
The link data in the tool is pulled from Ahrefs. So you’ll need to authenticate the extension to access Ahrefs API data.
google chrome extensions ahrefs
This SEO plugin is useful not just for discovering link building opportunities. It’s also useful to check broken links on your website to improve user experience.
- Linkclump
This is another useful tool to play with links.
You can use it to open multiple links in new tabs (or a new window), copy them to your clipboard or bookmark them.
So how do you get started?
Just by choosing a particular portion of the screen.
google chrome extensions link clump
You can even customize how you want to activate the tool.
There are various possible mouse (right-click and left-click) and key combinations (alt/ctrl/shift). If you like, you can even change the selection box color.
You’ll need to head over to Chrome’s extension page at chrome://extensions. And choose “options” below Linkclump to find these customization options.
google chrome extensions link clump screenshot
You can also filter the links that contain certain keywords, block repeated links in your selection, and open links in reverse order. There is also a smart select option to open only those links from a page that the tool deems as important.
Overall the tool is glitch-free and can save you a lot of time while performing link-related tasks.
- Google Analytics URL Builder
Google Analytics (GA) is an extremely powerful tool to track your website traffic.
The URL Builder extension is a useful add-on to quickly tag the URLs you want to track in your GA campaigns.
Let me show you how to use the tool.
Once you’re on a page, click on the shopping cart icon.
The tool will automatically capture the current URL of the page. You will then need to complete a form, including fields like the source, medium, campaign, etc.
google chrome extensions GA URL builder
Once you’ve filled the form, it’ll auto-generate the final URL and offer an option to generate the shortened bit.ly link.
You can then share this new tagged link through your social media accounts and track them independently using GA.
The extension also allows you to add custom form fields (quick sets) by clicking on the “edit list” link.
google chrome extensions GA URL builder
Here is a step-by-step video tutorial of the URL builder to walk you through the process of tagging your links.
best chrome extensions for web developers
If you’re a developer, you will likely already have a collection of favourite Chrome extensions you use on a daily basis. Extensions that make life easier, make you more productive or perform an essential task better than a dedicated tool. This list may build on that collection.
As the vast majority of us use Chrome, it makes sense to consider Chrome extensions. Other browsers are available but Chrome is used by 64.4% of internet users. While it isn’t big on privacy, it certainly aces productivity!
We polled our own team and asked every dev we know for their list of Chrome developer extensions they use regularly or would suggest. What follows is a curated list of the best Chrome extensions for developers around right now.
These may not be the most popular extensions but they have been tried, tested and not found wanting by the Astra team!
Table Of Contents
The Best Chrome Extensions for Web Developers
- Githunt
- WhatFont
- Fonts Ninja
- ColorPick Eyedropper
- Window Resizer
- BrowserStack
- CSS Viewer
- Lorem Ipsum Generator
- Corporate Ipsum
- Ghostery
- Wappalyzer
- Clear Cache
- HTML Validator
- Keyframes
The Best Chrome Extensions for Developers - React Developer Tools
- JSON Viewer
- ColorZilla
- Dimensions
- Page Ruler
- UX Check
- Check My Links
- Web Developer Checklist
- Checkbot
- Web Developer
- EditThisCookie
- Lightshot
- Session Buddy
- Daily.dev
Summary of the Best Chrome Extensions for Developers
The Best Chrome Extensions for Web Developers
As development has several specialities, we have divided our list into two. One part containing tools useful for web developers and the second tools for generalist developers.
There’s sure to be something here you could use!
- Githunt
githunt extension for chrome
Githunt is useful if you spend a lot of time on GitHub looking for new projects to work on. Rather than depending on GitHub’s trending projects feed, this Chrome developer extension brings it to the fore by highlighting all trending projects in a new tab area in your browser.
You can search projects in different languages, read a brief project description and the number of current open issues. You can then simply select the project within the tab to go to the project and inspect further. It’s a very useful little extension if you like contributing to new projects.
4,000+ users
Rating: 3/5 for answer a need in a narrow niche
Get Started with Githunt
Sujay Pawar
Hello! My name is Sujay and I’m CEO of Astra.
We’re on a mission to help small businesses grow online with affordable software products and the education you need to succeed.
Leave a comment below if you want to join the conversation, or click here if you would like personal help or to engage with our team privately.
- WhatFont
What font chrome extension
WhatFont is a very useful Chrome extension for developers who need to identify fonts used on web pages. It’s fast, effective and identifies individual fonts within a page in seconds. It also identifies the family, size, weight and colour. All within a small popup window in the browser.
WhatFont is ideal for web developers who like to collect examples of great pages they might want to emulate in the future. It’s small, doesn’t use many resources and well worth using. It hasn’t been updated in a while but still works perfectly.
1,000,000+ users
Rating: 3.5/5 for usability
Get Started with WhatFont
- Fonts Ninja
font ninja chrome extension demo
Fonts Ninja works in a similar way to WhatFont to identify fonts within a web page. It’s a useful alternative if WhatFont isn’t working out for you for any reason. It works in much the same but has a smaller interface. Otherwise, the two extensions look and feel very similar.
Install the extension and you should see a small green ninja icon in your toolbar. Open a web page in Chrome, select the icon and hover over a font you want to identify. You should see a page overview popup and an individual popup over the highlighted font. Simple but very effective.
300,000+ users
Rating: 3.5/5 for usability
Get Started with Fonts Ninja
- ColorPick Eyedropper
Colorpick eyedroper chrome extension
ColorPick Eyedropper is a very neat zoomed selector for web pages. It’s a useful Chrome developer extension because it can quickly identify any colour on any web page and zooms in so you can even select a border 1px wide. While you may not use it every day, it’s an excellent tool to keep on hand.
Once you install ColorPick Eyedropper, you simply select the colour wheel icon to activate it. Your cursor will change to a crosshair, highlight the section you want to identify and you should see the RGB values and the hex appear on the right of the screen.
1,000,000+ users
Rating: 3.5/5 for usability, zero for UX design
Get Started with ColorPick Eyedropper
- Window Resizer
Windows resizer chrome extension
Window Resizer is an incredibly useful Chrome extension for web developers. It’s simple but very effective, especially when working with responsive designs or apps. It installs into Chrome and will resize any screen you’re working on to a range of popular screen sizes.
Most common sizes are covered, mobile, tablet, desktop and the emulation seems very accurate. The guys here use Window Resizer a lot and rate it highly. That’s good enough for us!
600,000+ users
Rating: 4.5/5 for usability and simplicity
Get Started with Window Resizer
- BrowserStack
BrowserStack chrome extension
BrowserStack is another exceptionally useful Chrome extension for web developers. Like Window Resizer, this extension allows you to test your work for responsiveness. Rather than different screen sizes, this extension lets you test with different browsers.
Install the extension, open your page in Chrome, select BrowserStack and select a device option from the tab. The page will then be rendered using an emulation of a browser on that device. Simply but very effective. You do need a BrowserStack account for it to work properly though.
100,000+ users
Rating: 3/5 usability is high, the requirement for an account is a definite mark against it.
Get Started with BrowserStack
- CSS Viewer
CSSViewer chrome extension demo
CSS Viewer is another simple but very effective Chrome extension for web developers. As its name implies, this addon shows you the CSS properties of a given page wherever you hover your mouse. A small popup window appears showing you the CSS data that makes up the element you’re pointing at.
This is a very smart extension that makes short work of identifying key CSS properties anywhere you point your mouse.
100,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for simplicity and ease of use
Get Started with CSS Viewer
- Lorem Ipsum Generator
Lorem Ipsum Generator
Lorem Ipsum Generator is one of the best Chrome extensions full stop. It does what its name suggests it does. It generates filler text for demo websites and does it well.
Simply install the extension, select it within a page, tell it how much Lorem Ipsum copy you want to generate and copy it from the window. Paste it into your page and you’re done.
20,000+ users
Rating 4/5 for ease of use
Get Started with Lorem Ipsum Generator
- Corporate Ipsum
Corporate Ipsum chrome extension
Corporate Ipsum is a popular alternative to the Lorem Ipsum Generator. If your client is more picky about placeholder text or you want to add to the feel of a business website, this is where you come. This Chrome developer extension generates lorem ipsum but with a corporate twist.
It works much like the Lorem Ipsum Generator too. Install the extension, open your page, select the icon and tell it how much copy to generate. Copy and page it into place and move onto the next. It’s a fast, simple way to generate more business-oriented placeholder text.
10,000+ users
Rating 4/5 for ease of use and for filling a specific need
Get Started with Corporate Ipsum
- Ghostery
Ghostery extension for chrome
Chrome is a great browser for many things but privacy is not among them. Ghostery aims to help with that. It’s a privacy extension designed to block intrusive ads, stop tracking, prevent data collection and block all those page elements that slow you down.
While Ghostery doesn’t provide any useful tools for web development, it keeps your browsing experience clean and makes everything faster. Every Chrome user should install Ghostery!
2,000,000+ users
Rating 5/5 for effectiveness
Get Started with Ghostery
- Wappalyzer
Wappalyzer chrome extension
Wappalyzer is a very effective tool for identifying the underlying technologies behind web pages. It quickly identifies web services, CMS type, analytics tools, plugins, JavaScript libraries and a whole host of other apps. If you want to know the secrets behind a page, this is one way to find out.
Just install the extension, select it while on a page and a popup window will appear highlighting all identifiable apps running on that page.
1,000,000+ users
Rating 4/5 for usefulness and clear UI
Get Started with Wappalyzer
- Clear Cache
clear cache chrome extension
How many times have you modified a setting and wondered why the change wasn’t reflected on screen? You’re not alone, which is why Clear Cache is such a useful Chrome developer extension.
Install the extension and select the small recycle icon in your browser to clear the browser cache. There are no confirmations and no extra dialogs to contend with. This tool just does what it’s supposed to do and we can all move on. We love it for that.
800,000+ users
Rating: 4.5/5 for simplicity
Get Started with Clear Cache
- HTML Validator
html validator chrome extension
HTML Validator is a quick tool for checking your HTML within a browser. There are hundreds of HTML tools out there and you’ll likely have a bunch of them already. But HTML Validator is genuinely useful for quickly validating markup within the browser.
Install the extension, open a developer window on the page and navigate to the HTML Validator tab. All your HTML goodness is displayed within with errors at the top.
30,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for usability but there is lot of competition out there
Get Started with HTML Validator
- Keyframes
Keyframes chrome extension
Keyframes is one of the best Chrome extensions for web developers who want to create CSS animations within the browser. While there are lots of tools out there for animation, this extension makes short work of creating basic animations within a simple popup window.
Just install Keyframes, open a page, select the red and blue icon and highlight a CSS element you want to animate. Edit that element in the side box to add your own piece of animation to the page. Simple and effortless!
20,000+ users
Rating: 3.5/5 for being genuinely useful if limited CSS animation tool
Get Started with Keyframes
The Best Chrome Extensions for Developers
The needs of some developers differ from those of web developers. That’s why we split our list of the best Chrome extensions for developers into two. While still useful across the board, what follows are more dev oriented Chrome extensions rather than web tools.
- React Developer Tools
React Developer Tools chrome extension
React Developer Tools are specifically for the open source React JavaScript library. If you work with React, this extension helps you inspect the library as required.
Install the extension and you should see two icons appear in the Chrome toolbar. One is for Components and the other for Profiler. Components shows you what React is using on the page and Profiler shows you performance data. If you work with React, this is an essential tool to have!
2,000,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for ease of use for a niche library
Get Started with React Developer
- JSON Viewer
json viewer extension
JSON Viewer is an alternative to JSONView and helps manage JSON data into a quickly recognizable hierarchy view in a browser window. Working with raw JSON data is fine when you have the time, but using this addon makes the code easier to quickly absorb and use.
It’s a small Chrome developer extension but it’s well worth checking out. With over 800,000 users and glowing reviews, this is definitely an extension to try.
800,000+ users
Rating 4/5 for reliability and ease of use.
Get Started with JSON Viewer
- ColorZilla
ColorZilla chrome extension
ColorZilla is a superb Chrome developer extension for colour selection. It includes an eyedrop colour selector, a colour history tool, a CSS gradient analyzer and a page analyzer that assesses colours on a web page.
If you come across a website whose palette resonates, this tool helps you identify the combinations or individual colours in seconds. It’s an essential extension for anyone who deals with colour on the web.
2,000,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for usability and productivity
Get Started with ColorZilla
- Dimensions
Dimensions chrome extension
Dimensions is a dynamic measure that uses your mouse. It’s a very useful Chrome developer extension if you want to measure spacing, dimensions, gaps between page elements and anything else you see on the page.
Once installed, you’ll see a small crosshair icon on your toolbar. Open a page in Chrome, select the icon and you should see a crosshair appear on screen. Move it around where you want to measure and you’ll see exact dimensions appear by the cross. Simple but very effective.
100,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for usability and productivity
Get Started with Dimensions
- Page Ruler
page ruler chrome extension
Page Ruler is similar to Dimensions in that it’s a dynamic measurement extension. While Dimensions can measure the height and width of elements, it is more useful for measuring between them. Page Rule measures those elements very accurately.
When you need to measure something, select the ruler icon so it turns orange. The page fades, allowing you to draw the element you want to measure. The extension will then present the exact measurements of the element in a small popup box beside it.
10,000+ users
Rating: 3/5 simple but takes a minute to figure out how to use it
Get Started with Page Ruler
- UX Check
ux check chrome extension
UX Check is a usability analyzer that assesses a page using Nielsen’s 10 heuristics. It can quickly highlight potential usability issues and enables you to add notes, take a screenshot and export the findings ready to share within the team.
UX Check is a very effective way to perform lightweight user testing without going into too much detail. Ideal as a first pass test before handing a project off for full testing.
30,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for productivity and ease of use
Get Started with UX Check
- Check My Links
check my links chrome extension
Check My Links does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a super-simple way to check for broken links. It can also check for valid links and redirected links as well as broken ones. While technically a dev tool, this Chrome developer extension could be useful for SEO and other specialities too.
Once installed into Chrome, you should see a small checkmark icon in your toolbar. Load your page, select the icon and a popup window will appear with all links assessed. Depending on the size of the page, this might take a few seconds but it works flawlessly.
200,000+ users
Rating: 4.5/5 for usability across web disciplines
Get Started with Check My Links
- Web Developer Checklist
web developer checklist chrome extension
Who doesn’t love a checklist? Web Developer Checklist is a Chrome developer extension that gives you a checklist of all the things that need to be completed on a page before publication. It’s a very useful add-on for busy developers.
Install the extension and you’ll see a code icon appear in the toolbar. Select it while on a page and a popup will appear with best practices you need to complete before publication. They include SEO, mobile, usability, accessibility, social, performance and other selectable measures.
A true lifesaver.
40,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for ease of use and usefulness
Get Started with Web Developer Checklist
- Checkbot
checkbot chrome extension
Checkbot is similar to the Web Developer Checklist in that it checks a page for links, errors, security, performance, SEO and a range of other considerations. It’s a very useful tool that adds to your repertoire and can be useful for a last pass before publication.
Checkbot installs in the same way all extensions do. Once done, select the blue icon to bring up the sidebar. Use the menus there to select the type of test you want to perform and the results will be displayed on the page.
30,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for covering basic tools and adding basic security checks
Get Started with Checkbot
- Web Developer
Web developer extension for chrome
Web Developer is a suite of tools contained within a single Chrome extension. While titled ‘Web Developer’ we think this tool is suitable for general devs too as it contains a range of useful tools that any dev can use.
Once installed, Web Developer is accessible using the small cog icon in the toolbar. Once selected, you should see a small dropdown box appear with a range of options organized into tabs. Select a tab to access the tools within. There is a lot going on here but each tool is genuinely useful.
1,000,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for having so many tools for so many tasks
Get Started with Web Developer
- EditThisCookie
Editthiscookie chrome extension
EditThisCookie is an exceptionally useful Chrome extension for developers. It enables you to edit, delete, create and protect cookies on a per-page basis. It also lets you export them for analysis, block them, import them into JSON and generally do as much as you could possibly need to do to a cookie.
The most useful tool is the ability to search and read cookies. Devs will find most of the tools useful at one point or another.
2,000,000+ users
Rating: 3.5/5 for sheer number of things you can do with a cookie
Get Started with EditThisCookie
- Lightshot
lightshot chrome extension
Lightshot is another of those Chrome developer extensions that could be useful for all kinds of people. While devs will likely use it a lot, UX testers. user testers, instructors, graphic designers and all kinds of users will make great screenshots with this tool.
Once installed, open the page you want to screenshot and select the feather icon. Drag and drop the cursor across the area you want to capture. Select from the popup menu that appears and save the shot.
1,000,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for being simple but very effective
Get Started with Lightshot
- Session Buddy
session buddy chrome extension
Session Buddy is another generalist tool useful for developers and any type of web user. It’s a ‘save it for later’ tool that can save all open tabs in a single session for later access. It is useful when you come across something you want to read later or for protecting productivity if you use multiple tabs.
Once Session buddy has been installed, select the small icon from the toolbar to see all your open tabs. You can select the icon after a browser crash to recover all tabs and save the session to load later. A very useful tool for any web user!
1,000,000+ users
Rating: 4/5 for protecting the world against browser crashes
Get Started with Session Buddy
- Daily.dev
daily dev news extension
daily.dev isn’t a productivity tool per se, but it does make our lives much easier. It’s a news aggregator that specializes in development news. It showcases a page full of news stories, blog posts and useful pages on our chosen subject.
Daily acts like a start page and news aggregator. Select an item on the page to visit that page. Each opens in a new tab and will be a mixture of news, reviews, advice, how-tos and all the good stuff that keeps us growing as developers. This is an excellent extension to use if you like to stay current.
40,000+ users
Rating: 4.5/5 for bringing all our news into one place
Conclusion
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