I’ve not done a geeky post in a while so I thought I’d rattle one off while I have a little spare time.
My current browser of choice is Google Chrome, although I confess it’s not 100% compatible with every site at present. Zemanta‘s WordPress plug-in, for starters, has some issues. But overall I’m finding it fast and stable across all the platforms on which I have it installed. This does not include MacOS, though, as the council won’t update the OS on the computers at work to one which will handle Chrome. Hell, we’re still on Firefox 1.x on the machines there!
One of the things that all the major browsers now allow you to do is to add extensions, or plug-ins. These can add functionality, repair interface problems, alter behaviour and so on. Basically, they let you tweak the browser so that it does that little bit more in the way you want it.
There are literally thousands of these little add-ons. One of the things I love about Chrome is that it is capable of syncing your extensions across various computers via your Google account. This means if I find an extension I like while using my netbook, it will be installed and configured on my laptop or desktop the next time I book up and go online. I don’t even have to remember.
I recently dug my old desktop out of storage after 6 years. I installed Chrome for the first time and within minutes, with no effort from myself other than putting in a username, it was configured with most of the extensions I use elsewhere.
“Most”? Ah, yes. One rule is that Chrome will only sync extensions that are in the official Google Chrome repository. For various reasons, some aren’t in there and these include some that I do use. Just like Apple apps, Android apps and so on there are third party repositories with apps that haven’t been submitted to the “official” stores, or which have been rejected.
If these don’t check themselves automatically then you do still have to manually ensure they’re upgraded and so forth. A shame, but understandable.
So anyway, without further ado – here are the extensions I have installed (and usually use regularly). Which ones do you use that may be useful?
Apparently the world’s most popular extension and available on most major browsers, Adblock Plus uses frequently updated filters to remove adverts from common websites, as well as preventing annoying pop-ups and pop-unders. Zero maintenance and one I installed as soon as I could get it for Chrome after using it for ages on FireFox.
I share a lot of links on Facebook and Twitter using “j.mp”, part of the bit.ly family. This extension makes it incredibly easy to do so. Just visit the page I want to share and click on the icon on the menu bar. The URL is shortened and I can then edit a message to go with it before posting to Twitter and/or Facebook.
Not the most exciting one, this. All it does is provide a drop-down list for all the system pages within Chrome. It just saves a bit of menu digging, or memorising shortcut keys.
Originally installed when I realised that Chrome didn’t have an easy way of subscribing to an RSS feed as FireFox did. With this installed, any site with an RSS feed generates a small icon in the address bar. Clicking on this adds the feed to Google Reader (which I use anyway), and also allows it to be categorised, ready to be read the next time I’m checking my news feeds.
Chromey Calculator and Chromey Calculator Enhancer
I use the calculator a lot when I’m working for various things, and I love the way that Google can do a lot of lookups relating to conversions, units of measurement, currency and the like. Chromey Calculator brings this into an icon-activated popup and the Enhancer adds localisation and a shortcut key. Google isn’t the only site used for reference (Wolfram Alpha is another, to start with) and it makes for a very useful little add-on.
Easy YouTube Video Downloader (via ChromeExtensions.org)
This is one of the extensions that isn’t in the official Google repository, most likely as it allows you to rip videos from YouTube which Google also owns. There are many ways to rip YouTube videos, but I find this one to be the neatest and easiest. The download option sits nicely on the usual webpage and looks like it’s always been there – though it doesn’t work on channel pages, just individual video pages.
Also note that on occasion it will “break” as YouTube changes its layout, but the developers usually update pretty quickly. You’ll have to check manually for these updates when you notice it’s not working though.
I think I mentioned this on a previous post, but it fixes a very small problem on a very specific website. In this case, Facebook recently decided to get rid of the “Comment” button and instead made the return key publish what you’d typed. In one fell swoop they removed the use of paragraphs and made the site even more prone to horrendous grammar and layout than before. Anyway, this tiny extension reverses this “update” and makes things nice and sensible again.
Now, if only someone would release an extension to repair all the bolloxed privacy settings on facebook…
A recent addition to my arsenal and one that would have the privacy freaks up in arms, but I think it’s worth it. Essentially, Greplin (love the name, by the way – a sneaky geek/UNIX reference) creates an index of sites that you link it to and uses these to make your searches quicker and easier. Amongst these are Google Mail, Calendar, Documents and Reader as well as Facebook, Twitter and a pile of other sites. There are some “premium/paid” only sites as well, including Google Apps sites.
Yes, it means a third party app has its claws in your data so that it can index it. Whether this is worth it is up to you. I find that with Greplin enabled, my GMail searching is better and it’s lovely having the little search button on my menu bar that trawls through all  my linked sites very quickly to return hits based on keywords.
There are several versions of this Windows-only extension, but I’ve settled on this one, partly as it’s in the official Google repository (at last). As I mentioned in the introduction, Chrome doesn’t work 100% with some websites. IE Tab allows you to open these sites using the Internet Explorer engine… without leaving Chrome. You can set up a list of pages/sites which will automatically be opened using IE Tab so that you don’t have to load it, click the icon and reload in IE.
A very useful little tool for checking the lowest price of goods you’re looking at. Checking out a DVD on Amazon? InvisibleHand will display a yellow bar at the top of the screen and let you know if you could be getting it cheaper from HMV or Play. It isn’t perfect, of course. It can’t check every website on the planet for every product, and it doesn’t take postage into account. However, it’s a great ready-reckoner and has already saved me around £20-£30 across a couple of purchases.
A nice security extension this one. Where possible, you should be using secure internet connections. Some websites, such as GMail, have a menu option which will ensure that when you connect you use HTTPS instead of usual HTTP. This encrypts your data as it goes back and forth and makes it far more difficult for someone to “sniff” your data in transit and pinch your logon details or correspondence. Facebook also offers this, but it’s turned off by default which is ludicrous.
KB SSL Enforcer forces a secure connection to any and every website that you go to. Now, this won’t always work. If the site doesn’t support HTTPS then fine, you’ll just connect with HTTP. Nothing lost, nothing gained. There are some sites, though, with partially functional HTTPS and these will often connect and seem OK until you try to perform some action when it won’t work. I’ve had this with logons, queries and even finding some information on the screen which is simply not there if you connect via HTTPS.
In this case, simply blacklist the site in the extension’s options and it will allow it to connect via HTTP instead. Not so much a worry at home, but a great extension for those who use their laptops and netbooks all over the place.
LastPass (and a link to the associated web site)
The main website does a great job of describing this superb extension including videos and so forth. Basically, it’s a secure password vault that stores your logon details for any website. They’re encrypted, hashed, you name it. It includes an option to generate a random password for each website. One-time passwords can be created and used to log onto LastPass.com if you’re in a cyber café on a dodgy computer – if someone logs the keypresses, it makes no difference as the password is discarded as soon as you’ve used it to log in once.
The paid version includes further security as well as a mobile app. Â LastPass gets round one major problem with websites – using the same damn login and password for far too many. This means that if your password is compromised, someone can access all of your data. Use LastPass, keep that one password ridiculously secure and you’re taking a large step towards protecting your online identity.
This isn’t anything too fancy, just a new “new tab” page for Chrome that takes the “dial” layout that was originally – I think – used by Opera. It’s simple, customisable and opens quickly. I don’t make a massive amount of use of it, but it’s nice enough.
Ever visited a web page where there are a handful of YouTube videos, all of which set to play automatically? Or even gone to one site and realised (once the noise has woken the child next to you or alerted your colleagues to the fact that you’re viewing Greatest Movie Deaths instead of working) that there is a video embedded partway down? This extension prevents that by forcing all YouTube videos on a page to pause until you decide you want the damn thing to play. Better than other similar extensions, this one allows the videos to download (“buffer”) while paused. Simple and effective.
This plug-in adds an extra drop-down menu to Google Reader which does a few things, but chief amongst these is to automatically download the entire post for blogs which only publish the first paragraph or so to their feed. Some people maybe don’t realise they have their blogging software set to do this, others maybe want you to head to the blog so they get “per appearance” advertising revenue. I’m often too lazy to click through, so having the whole text in my reader is far more convenient.
Super Google Reader will yank it down either as plain text or in the format of the actual blog page (including borders, widgets, etc). Impressive.
TweetFilter (not in the repository)
Another superb extension that for some reason isn’t in the official repositories. TweetFilter does a lot with the “new” Twitter interface. You do need to keep an eye out for it breaking, though, as Twitter do recode their site regularly. The developers of TweetFilter do a good job of keeping up to date.
Foremost, it allows you to filter out (or only filter for) certain terms in your Twitter feed. Great for getting rid of all the bloody Britain’s Got Talent cobblers and the like that infest my feed every weekend. It will also get rid of adverts, those irritating “Twitter recommends you follow these people for no reason at all” mentions and a ton of other stuff. It’s very customisable.
Kind of the opposite of the aforementioned bit.ly extension, this one “decodes” shortened URLs on web pages and gives you the actual link behind them. Very useful to ensure that the link is genuine and doesn’t take you to some porn site. Or worse, the Daily Mail.
While Chrome will allow you to sync bookmarks, I’m not keen on Google’s way of handling them once you have them online. It’s a mess, frankly. Xmarks was recently bought out by LastPass and it’s handled every bit as professionally. It’s also cross-browser (useful at work where I can’t install Chrome) and browser-independent if you visit the site directly. The Chrome version is feature-light compared to the FireFox one, which allows comments and tagging of newly-added bookmarks. Hopefully this will come with time, but isn’t a major issue. At the end of the day it performs the most important task of keeping bookmarks synchronised and organised across multiple platforms.
