Adblock - After using it for a while, it becomes impossible to NOT use it, and still retain focus. Every page contains something that is fighting for your attention when it's not in use.
Firebug - Incredible client-side development tool.
Show anchors - Reveals anchors (<a> tag) in the page, making it easy to make more precise links into pages.
Tamper data - Makes it possible to modify browser requests before submitting them to the server. Great addition to Firebug as a development tool.
Just for your information, I noticed a few weeks ago that there is a beta version of Firebug for Chrome.
Instead of Web Developer I use "Web Developer" in Chrome, which is quite similar by features, but is not shown as a toolbar as in Firefox.
I couldn't live without Tree Style Tabs, which is one of the main reasons I haven't switched to Chrome either.
I'm in exactly the same situation - I literally cannot stand to use a browser without that extension anymore, especially on a widescreen computer. I've tried to move over to Chrome, but the lack of that extension is the single blocking issue for me.
Step one when I get a new computer is to install Firefox; step two is Tree Style Tabs. Anyone that hasn't tried it is really missing out...
I don't understand. You use all popular Chrome extension?
My intention is to find out the extensions that hackernewsers use, not the popular extensions. Of course there will always be some intersections, but I doubt everyone here uses all popular extensions, and I doubt no-one here uses some good but unknown, unpopular extensions.
Extension Gallery Inspector (Invaluable if you want to know what an extension is going to do BEFORE you install)
TackyNotes (I should note that I don't really use this, I just have it installed because I wrote it. I suppose the fact that I don't use it is a good indicator of why I've lost interest in developing it. They say it's best to write software to fix a problem you have or someone else has and I think that kind of missed the mark.)
I forget what it is called, and am on my mobile now, but I use one which loads the next paginated page below the one you are viewing, so hacker news becomes one long page for me. only loads the next age when you get down the page. love it.
also one to tweet the page I am viewing. I use twitter as more of an annotated favorites/bookmark list than anything else: twitter.com/liamjford
That last one is awesome -- thanks for pointing that out to me.
To add one I haven't seen on here yet, Switchy!, which lets you quickly switch proxy settings under Chrome. It supports SOCKSv5, which last I had checked before I started using it there was no easy way to do with Chrome.
I don't use Chrome (privacy issues), but for Firefox,
* Flashblock
* Greasemonkey
* Firebug
* It'sAllText (which allows the use of an external editor)
* A few mostly inconsequential ones, like IdentFavicon, etc.
I find that flashblock takes care of most of my ad-blocking needs, and the rest I can do with a local DNS server. The re-emergence of badly behaved Javascript (Remember when all we had to worry about was scrolling/blinking text and alert() boxes? Those were the days.) is what prompted me to install Greasemonkey; I've got a little script that wipes iframes and kills window.XMLHttpRequest, for example
Which one? You do realize it's open source so if you found anything we're not aware of by looking at the code please do tell. Also do you own a mobile phone? Because if you care about privacy, a mobile phone is much worse than chrome.
Chromium is open source, Chrome includes Google's special sauce. Now, I don't think Google is abusing this privilege, but I just wanted to point out the difference.
Google is a company that makes money by knowing everything about people, and then presenting ads to them. A browser is a great way to be able to follow a user wherever they go, even after they leave Google's sites. I'm not the op, but I block google analytics for the same reason.
I'm not as worried about sneaky things on the client side as I am about what they're up-front about. The URL bar sending everything I type upstream, for example. And I can turn my phone off any time I might be worried, in much the same way I can avoid using Chrome when I might not want to give Google data, which happens to be always.
To sort of explain, the whole concept of "privacy" as Google sees it is a little creepy to me. I realize that I may be overly cautious or paranoid, but I don't see any comforting counter-examples. I got rid of my Android phone on discovering that I couldn't have contacts or calendar entries that didn't get sent to Google in one form or another, and the Google Maps application wanted me to agree to allow location data* to be sent upstream even when I wasn't using it. Eric thinks we should just change our names. None of this sits well with me at all.
Even if they have no intentions of misusing data (which is stretching it), what they retain is still subject to subpoenas, leaks, hacks, or willful violations like Google Buzz (arguably unintentional) or the case of their SRE David Barksdale. Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead, etc., and machines and the people who operate them have not had a good track record on safeguarding other people's data.
* The application did specify that the data collected would be "anonymous", but didn't say how that was ensured. Between Google's skirmishes with the EU over how they "anonymize" their search logs (spoiler: they don't, last I checked; they keep the cookie-tracking data and scrub the last octet of the IP) and their recent privacy issues with two different SREs don't inspire any confidence.
It irritates me no end that the Chrome developers refuse to implement this. (And yes, in googling around on the topic, I did come across a blog post by someone involved explaining that this is a design decision on their part and not an oversight.)
As a workaround, I'll open a subset of most active tabs in a second window. Tabs I am actively switching between as I'm doing my work.
Then, I'll end up closing the Windows in the wrong order and have the subset saved for restoration rather than the full set.
Please, Chrome devs, just make MRU tab switching an option, regardless of what you personally think about it. It is a common work occurrence to need to frequently switch between different pairs or small sets of tabs within a larger context of numerous references/tabs.
P.S. Extensions can't substitute the behavior, because a security measure -- so stated -- Chrome no longer allows browser default shortcut keys, e.g. Ctrl Tab, to be hooked and overridden.
P.P.S. I'd welcome suggestions for good substitutes that use a different key combination or another paradigm that's easy to tolerate.
There's also one called Ctrl-Tab that does the same, and also allows you to alt-Q (or is it Ctrl-Q) to give you thumbnails of all open tabs, then switch to tab by name (Emacs iswitchb style).
No one mentioned Xmarks (almost all browsers) to sync bookmarks and tabs between browsers
OneNumber (chrome) which checks for Gmail, GReader, GVoice and wave for updates.
Then I would recommend Boomerang for Gmail (both FF and Chrome) that allows you to postpone an email to send to whenever you want.
Google Dictionary (chrome): double click a word and it shows you the definition - really unobtrusive
Lazarus:Form recovery (chrome) - if you were typing some text in a textArea/field and the browser crashes it can easily put the text back in when you open the page again.
Rapportive for Gmail (chrome, but i thinks it also works in FF) - shows you details about senders, social networking accounts, etc
Stop Autoplay for Youtube (chrome) - great if you like to open many videos in tabs and dont want to hear them play all at the same time
Firefox:
Firebug, Pagespeed for finding slowdowns in my pages.
WebRank toolbar for when I'm too lazy to open Market Samurai.
Chrome:
Eyedropper for stealing a color.
Nofollow eyes to make sure my pages aren't wasting pagerank.
SEOQuake for when I'm too lazy to open firefox/MS.
Ultimate Chrome Flag. I like seeing ips/locations/etc.
Chromed Bird for my twitter accounts that are for business.
Firefox:
- Firebug (my life wouldn't be same (or sane) without it)
- Remove cookies for site (one click to remove all cookies for current domain, essential when developing cookie based sites)
- FireGestures (lets you go back, reload, close tabs, etc. by preconfigured right click gestures - a feature invented by Opera I believe, I can't browse without it)
- AdBlockPlus (I hate to admit this but a news site I visit frequently is so loaded with flash ads that my machine almost becomes unresponsive upon visiting)
Chrome:
I try to find the same extensions as for Firefox but:
- Firebug lite was missing the "Net" panel last time I checked
- I haven't found a gestures addon that doesn't suck
- I haven't found a remove cookies for site add-on
So migrating to Chrome has been quite hard for me.
I used to have a lot more extensions installed on Firefox, but right now all I actually use is:
AdBlock Plus, Download Statusbar, and Tab Scope.
Although one personal 'hack' almost counts: I moved the bookmark toolbar up next to the system menu, to use up all that space and give me quick access to all the sites I read. I have about 14 folders up there, and the Readability bookmarklet. I'm nervous about FF4 because I don't know where I'll be able to put my bookmarks...
AdBlock, FlashBlock, Readability and Instapaper. The web is an obnoxious assault on the senses. There is some useful stuff in between all those flashing billboards and neon lights so I block all of the distractions that I can. I wish there was a SocialNewsBlock plugin to get rid of all of those damn buttons everyone puts on their sites, too.
I know Readability is a bookmarklet but your comment made me search the FF add-ons for a Readability add-on that was applied to every page I visit automatically.
I use many of the ones people have mentioned here, but in Firefox. Can't switch to Chrome because it doesn't have a good implementation of two of my favorite add-ons:
Stumbleupon - for whenever I need a distraction that even HN can't fullfil
Colorzilla - For getting colors of web pages; use this about a dozen times a day
Since I like a fast, non-cluttered, browser I have only one addon installed in Chrome. "No More Tabs" protects me of opening 40+ tabs and telling myself all the time "Don't close it, you might need it again!"
90 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 179 ms ] threadFirebug - Incredible client-side development tool.
Show anchors - Reveals anchors (<a> tag) in the page, making it easy to make more precise links into pages.
Tamper data - Makes it possible to modify browser requests before submitting them to the server. Great addition to Firebug as a development tool.
Firebug, pretty handy.
Tamper Data, for viewing HTTP headers and tampering with them.
ShowIP, shows the current website's IP.
leetkey, great for text transformations, various encoders/decoders.
Screengrab, for taking screenshots.
Scrapbook Plus, for archiving pages (can also do some light crawling with it)
Mozilla Archive Format, also for archiving pages.
Delicious Bookmarks, for bookmarks.
AppTab, to make tabs sticky.
OptimizeGoogle, to make Google searching better.
UnPlug, for downloading embedded content.
DownThemAll, for downloading things.
HTTPS-Everywhere, redirects to HTTPS versions of certain websites.
ErrorZilla Plus, makes error pages more useful.
Those are the best ones, I use various other extensions depending on what I'm doing. I have a few addons deactivated at any given time.
BetterPrivacy (LSO Cookie Remover)
Firebug (+ Firecookie)
Hackbar
NoScript
Tree Style Tab
Web Developer Toolbar
All of which have no (satisfactory) Chrome equivalent and thus prevent me from switching ;)
I considered switching to Lunascape, which is a browser that will let you use webkit rendering and firefox plugins, but it's Windows only :(
I'm in exactly the same situation - I literally cannot stand to use a browser without that extension anymore, especially on a widescreen computer. I've tried to move over to Chrome, but the lack of that extension is the single blocking issue for me.
Step one when I get a new computer is to install Firefox; step two is Tree Style Tabs. Anyone that hasn't tried it is really missing out...
Next question.
My intention is to find out the extensions that hackernewsers use, not the popular extensions. Of course there will always be some intersections, but I doubt everyone here uses all popular extensions, and I doubt no-one here uses some good but unknown, unpopular extensions.
Adblock + Browser Button for Adblock (obvious...)
Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller (similar to iPhone kinetic scrolling)
Google Mail Checker Plus (obvious)
Instachrome (integration with Instapaper)
iReader (similar to Safari Reader)
Pinboard Tools (integration with Pinboard bookmarks service)
Reader Plus (changes the default theme of Google Reader among other customizations)
Redgur (shows all imgur stored images present on a page)
RSS Subscription Extension (obvious)
Search Preview for Google (website previews on search results)
Send using Gmail (mail_to integration with Gmail)
Stylish (similar to Greasemonkey but for CSS styling)
Rapportive
Chrome 2 Phone
Google Voice
Lastpass
Google Reader
Craigslist Comprehensive Cleanup
Craigslist Preview
Facebook Photo Zoom
Extension Gallery Inspector (Invaluable if you want to know what an extension is going to do BEFORE you install)
TackyNotes (I should note that I don't really use this, I just have it installed because I wrote it. I suppose the fact that I don't use it is a good indicator of why I've lost interest in developing it. They say it's best to write software to fix a problem you have or someone else has and I think that kind of missed the mark.)
also one to tweet the page I am viewing. I use twitter as more of an annotated favorites/bookmark list than anything else: twitter.com/liamjford
Quieturl
This addon transforms urls that are plain text into clickable anchors. Very very handy, I couldn't browse without it now.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6912/
builtwith - tries to tell you what tech sites use under the hood
delicious bookmarkts - official
docs PDF/powerpoint viewer - opens PDF links with google docs viewer instead of adobe
eye dropper
goo.gl url shortener
gmail checker plus
ireader - reading format
lastpass
linkpush - saves link for opening on android (has an app on anroid you open to get that link)
measureit! - measure pixels between stuff
rss subscription extension - adds fireefox like detection for RSS feeeds
stayfocusd - 30 mins of HN/facebook etc a day
To add one I haven't seen on here yet, Switchy!, which lets you quickly switch proxy settings under Chrome. It supports SOCKSv5, which last I had checked before I started using it there was no easy way to do with Chrome.
AdBlock
FlashBlock
Google Analytics Opt-out (not sure why :)
Google Mail Checker Plus
iReader
Modified keyboard navigation for Chrome
Rapportive
-
Firefox: FireBug, YSlow, Page Speed.
Shortly
ClickToFlash
* Flashblock
* Greasemonkey
* Firebug
* It'sAllText (which allows the use of an external editor)
* A few mostly inconsequential ones, like IdentFavicon, etc.
I find that flashblock takes care of most of my ad-blocking needs, and the rest I can do with a local DNS server. The re-emergence of badly behaved Javascript (Remember when all we had to worry about was scrolling/blinking text and alert() boxes? Those were the days.) is what prompted me to install Greasemonkey; I've got a little script that wipes iframes and kills window.XMLHttpRequest, for example
Which one? You do realize it's open source so if you found anything we're not aware of by looking at the code please do tell. Also do you own a mobile phone? Because if you care about privacy, a mobile phone is much worse than chrome.
Google is a company that makes money by knowing everything about people, and then presenting ads to them. A browser is a great way to be able to follow a user wherever they go, even after they leave Google's sites. I'm not the op, but I block google analytics for the same reason.
To sort of explain, the whole concept of "privacy" as Google sees it is a little creepy to me. I realize that I may be overly cautious or paranoid, but I don't see any comforting counter-examples. I got rid of my Android phone on discovering that I couldn't have contacts or calendar entries that didn't get sent to Google in one form or another, and the Google Maps application wanted me to agree to allow location data* to be sent upstream even when I wasn't using it. Eric thinks we should just change our names. None of this sits well with me at all.
Even if they have no intentions of misusing data (which is stretching it), what they retain is still subject to subpoenas, leaks, hacks, or willful violations like Google Buzz (arguably unintentional) or the case of their SRE David Barksdale. Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead, etc., and machines and the people who operate them have not had a good track record on safeguarding other people's data.
* The application did specify that the data collected would be "anonymous", but didn't say how that was ensured. Between Google's skirmishes with the EU over how they "anonymize" their search logs (spoiler: they don't, last I checked; they keep the cookie-tracking data and scrub the last octet of the IP) and their recent privacy issues with two different SREs don't inspire any confidence.
As a workaround, I'll open a subset of most active tabs in a second window. Tabs I am actively switching between as I'm doing my work.
Then, I'll end up closing the Windows in the wrong order and have the subset saved for restoration rather than the full set.
Please, Chrome devs, just make MRU tab switching an option, regardless of what you personally think about it. It is a common work occurrence to need to frequently switch between different pairs or small sets of tabs within a larger context of numerous references/tabs.
P.S. Extensions can't substitute the behavior, because a security measure -- so stated -- Chrome no longer allows browser default shortcut keys, e.g. Ctrl Tab, to be hooked and overridden.
P.P.S. I'd welcome suggestions for good substitutes that use a different key combination or another paradigm that's easy to tolerate.
OneNumber (chrome) which checks for Gmail, GReader, GVoice and wave for updates.
Then I would recommend Boomerang for Gmail (both FF and Chrome) that allows you to postpone an email to send to whenever you want.
Google Dictionary (chrome): double click a word and it shows you the definition - really unobtrusive
Lazarus:Form recovery (chrome) - if you were typing some text in a textArea/field and the browser crashes it can easily put the text back in when you open the page again.
Rapportive for Gmail (chrome, but i thinks it also works in FF) - shows you details about senders, social networking accounts, etc
Stop Autoplay for Youtube (chrome) - great if you like to open many videos in tabs and dont want to hear them play all at the same time
Chrome: Eyedropper for stealing a color. Nofollow eyes to make sure my pages aren't wasting pagerank. SEOQuake for when I'm too lazy to open firefox/MS. Ultimate Chrome Flag. I like seeing ips/locations/etc. Chromed Bird for my twitter accounts that are for business.
* Notscript (blocks javascript, not as good as noscript for firefox but imho still good)
* Adblock
* Navigate on paste (load webpage with middle click on linux)
* Type ahead find (just start typing to search)
* android2cloud (send urls from your mobile phone to your browser)
For Firefox:
* TabMixPlus (Multiple rows for tabs)
* NoScript (JavaScript blocker)
* AdBlock Plus
* FoxyProxy (easy managable proxys)
* AutoAuth (automatically submits saved http basic authentication dialogs)
* Locationbar² (easy access to url segments)
* Firebug
Just wanted to say thanks; this is the first time I've ever seen one of my extensions listed in a "What extensions do you use?" discussion.
Chrome: I try to find the same extensions as for Firefox but: - Firebug lite was missing the "Net" panel last time I checked - I haven't found a gestures addon that doesn't suck - I haven't found a remove cookies for site add-on
So migrating to Chrome has been quite hard for me.
PS. Yes, I'm a web developer
AdBlock Plus, Download Statusbar, and Tab Scope.
Although one personal 'hack' almost counts: I moved the bookmark toolbar up next to the system menu, to use up all that space and give me quick access to all the sites I read. I have about 14 folders up there, and the Readability bookmarklet. I'm nervous about FF4 because I don't know where I'll be able to put my bookmarks...
Gmail Checker - Adds an icon to the toolbar with a badge of how many new emails I have.
Helvetify - Forces Helvetica Neue as the font for all websites.
Facebook Photo Zoom - Zooms photo thumbnails on Facebook so you don't have to reload the whole page when you want to see a photo.
That might be a nice hack.
1: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jggheggpdocamnea...
Stumbleupon - for whenever I need a distraction that even HN can't fullfil
Colorzilla - For getting colors of web pages; use this about a dozen times a day
AdBlock
Aviary Screen Capture
Awesome Screenshot - (to capture the whole page)
Better Facebook Fixer
Chromey Calculator
DayHiker - For Google calendar. Check schedule and tasks from toolbar.
Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)
Forecastfox Weather
Gmail Notes (Beta) - Add notes to conversations in Gmail and save these notes to Google Docs.
Gmail StrikeThrough - Enable StrikeThrough in Gmail or Google Apps Mail.
Gmail Unread Message Count in Favicon
Google Calendar Dynamic Icon - Changes the number on the Google Calendar favicon to reflect the current date
Google Chrome to Phone Extension
Google Mail Checker Plus
Google Voice (by Google
Graph Your Inbox - Visualize your Gmail data.
Novell Moonlight
Rapportive - (Disabled)
Speed Dial
Tab Sugar
* AdBlock
* Firebug Lite for Google Chrome
* Minimalistic Google Reader
* RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)
--
Firefox (for development, where some extensions in Chrome aren't available) Add-Ons:
* Firebug
* JSONView
* Live HTTP Headers
* Modify Headers
* Page Speed
* User Agent Switcher
* Web Developer Toolbar
* YSlow
--
I also have a folder of bookmarklets on my toolbar in Chrome:
* Google Analytics: Last Week
* Huffduffer: Add
* Instapaper: Add
* Pinboard: Add
* Twitter: Remove @mentions
* Readability
* Inject jQuery