15 Must-Have Useful Google Chrome Extensions

I started using Chrome around a year ago, before I used Firefox as my primary web-browser, but due to its never ending hunger for memory, freezing effects and frequent crashes, I switched to Google Chrome. Before not many extensions were available for Chrome, so I sometimes had to use Firefox to do my job, due to its wide range of add-ons.

But later many extensions emerged for Chrome which suppressed the use of Firefox even more. I don't use it often, hardly sometimes in a month for some specific purposes like testing etc.

The user-base of Chrome is increasing rapidly due to which now it is now the second most widely used browser after Internet Explorer. Developers are now taking interest and developing extensions for Chrome, so it has a huge directory of extensions like Firefox. I have listed down some most popular and widely used extensions which will ease your task and increase your productivity.

1- Speed Dial:

The Speed Dial is a wonderful extension which replaces your existing speed dial, you can set the number of speed dials in a page and select your desired theme and background image, the best part is you can use predefined logos of websites as speed dials.

2- Incredible Start Page:

Incredible Start page replaces your existing start page, with easy to find and attractive looking bookmarks and closed tabs. You can customize looks by choosing different themes and can also set a background image.

3- Turn Off The Lights:

If you are a YouTube geek or watch a lot of videos, you can experience cinema like video experience with this extension, with the click of the lamp button the page with a video with turn's dark an so you can only focus on the video. The extension supports all social networks and social networking sites.

4- Awesome Screenshot:

This awesome extension lets you capture any part of a web-page or even the whole web-page and annotate it with rectangles, circles, lines and text, support to upload and share or save on hard-drive.

5- Visual Tabs:

This extension lets you navigate through tabs with the help of visual thumbnails of tabs and option to close them within the popup window. It has a good effect and background can be customized in the options menu.

6- Chrome Toolbox:

Chrome Toolbox by Google lets you customize your tabs behavior, save unsaved form data, magnify images and define shortcuts to open all links any bookmark folder. Put your favorite Chrome functionalities in a drop-down menu.

7- Google Mail Checker [Gmail Notifier]:

Get notified when a mail arrives in your Gmail inbox with the Google Mail notifier. The notifier displays the number of unread emails in your inbox and you can open your inbox by clicking on the notification.

8- Silver Bird [Twitter Notifier]:

Silver Bird is a twitter extension which will display your twitter timeline and interact with your twitter account. You can also follow/un-follow users by using the inline options menu, and much more using this extension.

9- Firebug Lite:

Firebug lite developer tool for Chrome, but is not a substitute for Firebug or Chrome developer tools and does not provide additional functionalities like Firebug or Chrome developer tools, you can inspect elements and edit CSS properties live with your mouse.

10- Switch Proxy:

Switch Chrome's proxy settings with just one-click, manage multiple-proxy configurations and edit them.

11- IE Tab:

This is specially made for websites which even today render properly only in IE, which the help of this extension you can use IE to render websites in a tab.

12- SEO Site Tools:

The extension is a comprehensive set of SEO tools, which displays On-page/External metrics, Social Media info and numbering on Google, Bing and Yahoo, it also enhances your Yahoo site explorer and Google Webmasters tools experience with anchor text and page-rank display and much more.

13- Windows Resizer:

Test your Website/blog in various resolutions with the help of this extension. The extension emulates browser window to the selected screen resolution.

14- Web2PDF:

This is another productivity extension with the help of which you can convert a webpage into a PDF file, it can also convert most sites with SSL encryption into a PDF file for offline viewing or view it on Google Docs.

15- YSlow:

Last but not the least, Yslow, a web page analyzer extension for Chrome which analyzes your Website and rate's it on the basis of a set of rules and suggest ways to improve your web pages performance.

Like the above list of extensions? Which other extensions do you use? Do these extensions motivate you to switch from Firefox to Chrome? Have a suggestion? Please share it using the comment form below!

Labels : Browser, Extensions, Google Chrome   | Posted by Sahil Patel   | 20:25