Chrome is arguably one of the best internet browsers of choice. Powered by Google itself, Chrome has anchored itself throughout most, if not all devices as the best all-around browser for the average internet user. Part of this success is due to the large, ever-growing and widely supported Chrome web store. On the web store, you have a huge choice of ‘extensions’ to make your browsing experience even better. Here’s our list of some of the best extensions we use as web users, designers, developers and SEO experts.
Grammarly
Grammarly is an advanced spelling and grammar checker for Chrome. Using its contextual spelling checker, Grammarly can detect and correct words used in the wrong context alongside commonly confused words. Even for those of you who (or should I say whom – thanks Grammarly) consider yourselves to be grammatically proficient, this plugin ensures grammar or spelling issues are kept to a minimum. Stated by Grammarly, your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and nearly everywhere else you write online will be covered.
Full Page Screen Capture
This extension does what the title says – it allows you to take a full page screen capture of the website you’re on and lets you download it as an image or PDF. This is particularly useful for long pages that require scrolling. Using this plugin, you won’t have to go through the laborious process of screenshotting, cutting and stitching the images together.
SEO Quake
This one’s only useful for those of you interested in (or working with) analytics. SEO Quake allows you to review major metrics quickly and easily, alongside checking social statistics, estimating keyword difficulty, running a complete SEO audit and more.
Page Ruler
If you’re a web designer or have ever tried putting a ruler against your screen, this extension’s for you! Page Ruler is a virtual ruler that works on websites. You can use it to get pixel dimensions and positioning, width, height and/or position of elements on a page.
Font Finder
Consider yourself a designer, developer or typographer? Maybe you’ve just seen fonts in the past you like but don’t know how to find out what they are? Font Finder will become your new best friend. Font Finder allows you to identify an element on a website and analyse any font, including the font colour, size, weight, style, variant and line height.
Colour Hex Code Finder
If you’ve used Photoshop or similar pieces of creative software, you’re probably familiar with the concept of a colour identifier tool. This extension does just that in your browser. Selecting the icon will allow you to hover over and click onto any area of a website. When that has been done, you will be given the colour values from that selected area. Handy for designers and developers for inspiration or consistency checking.
AdBlock
If you’ve managed to make it into 2019 without using or knowing, what AdBlock is, I’d be impressed. For those of you who don’t, it’s a popular extension that prevents pop-ups and intrusive adverts appearing on websites. As allowing pop-ups and advertisements can be a form of revenue for the website, this add-on can be problematic for some owners. Over the past couple of years, websites have been able to identify when the extension is functioning and act accordingly. Typically, when utilised, websites will wield a plethora of methods to get a user to turn AdBlock off for their website. This involves messages with upfront and candid realities about the importance of advertisements keeping their website up; options to subscribe for ad-free experiences; humour, and more. Often times there is an option to view the website with AdBlock installed and running still, however some of the more popular websites out there have taken the bold decision to prevent anyone running AdBlock on the website until they disable it. As well as being hugely useful in making your browsing experience less invaded and better, seeing creative ways websites try to get you to turn it off for their visit is an additional reason this extension has made the list!
Do you have a favourite Chrome Extension that we haven’t mentioned? Let us know!
