I’ve been a Firefox user now for some years and I’ve been very happy with it. However, I’ve also been dabbling in Google Chrome and I know lots of people who have started utilizing it in place of Internet Explorer, as well as some who select it over their once-beloved Firefox — though this latter group is somewhat rare.
One reason so numerous Firefox users are not moving to Google Chrome is that Firefox has an army of extensions and plug-ins that many users have found hard to do without. Even IE has toolbars and other utilities that could be added on, but not as many as Firefox.
Nevertheless, Chrome is catching up, and there are now some very good Chrome extensions and plug-ins. Here are some that I recommend (in no particular order).
1. Turn off the Lights: This enables the background of a whole page to fade to dark so that you can view a video (from YouTube, for instance) as if you are within the cinema. With 1 click on the lamp button, the web page will go dark. Click again, and it returns back as regular.
2. WOT: WOT stands for Web of Trust — a service that offers feedback on Web websites before you visit them. It can flag those that deliver malware or spam, and it also lists shopping websites which are recognized to cheat clients. It provides age-related ratings for site content, as well. Other users rate the websites they visit and this information is appended to the search outcomes you receive from any major research engine.
3. Split Screen: This opens a brand new tab and prompts the user for two URLs, then displays both websites on one web page. It’s excellent for cross-reference studying and surfing the Internet in general! Watch a video (or wait for it to buffer) while you surf another Internet web page.
4. Currency Converter: This extension adds a brand new button to your browser toolbar. Click the button to open a popup where you can convert 162 different currencies.
5. AddThis: Share to Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Posterous, Instapaper, and 200 more sites. AddThis translate pages and autoconfigures depending on usage.
6. Google Mail Checker Plus: Displays the number of unread messages in your Gmail and Google Apps inbox. Preview mail, read, delete, archive, and mark as spam!
7. Auto HD for YouTube: Begin playing all YouTube videos in HD by default (if it’s possible).
8. Xmarks Bookmarks Sync: Back up and sync your bookmarks across computers and browsers. Xmarks is also available for Firefox, Safari, and IE.
9. SEO Site Tools: If you’ve your own Web site and you wish to monitor its traffic, this will give you on-page and external metrics, social media info, your site’s number rating on Yahoo!, Bing, and Google SERPs. It extends WMT, YSE, and GA with metrics.
10. Google Translate: This extension translates whole Web pages into a language of your option with 1 click.