Useful Google Chrome Extensions 2011

Posted in Cloud Computing, Software

In my almost 15years(!) of browsing on and around the Internet, I find myself totally onto the ‘Google bandwagon’ these days. I use all their apps, gmail, google+, etc.

For the past year I’ve been slowly migrating from Mozilla FireFox to Google Chrome. Google Chrome version 12 is an amazing browser on itself, but by extending the browser with Chrome Extensions you get a second to none browsing experience!

All Chrome extensions below are freely available, and are displayed in no specific order. However at 15sep ’11 I did split them into 2 categories:

Please bare in mind that every extension ‘eats up’ 12-70MB of RAM! So I recommend min. 3GB of RAM!

1) Most used by my computer customers:

Adblock or open-source equivalent AdBlock Plus
Auto Replay for YouTube
Clear history | with the click of a button
Downloads
Fastest Chrome | save time and enhance your productivity; get quick definitions, auto-load next pages, search faster, and more.
SearchPreview | Adds preview images (thumbnails) to your Google Search Results
Tab Menu | Select, close, rearrange, and search your tabs from a toolbar menu!
YouTube to MP3 convertor | the easiest way!

2) My personal additions:

bit.ly | a simple URL shortener
Eye Dropper | webpage color picker
FileServe Assistant | start downloading faster from MegaUpload, Wupload, filesonic, rapidshare, etc. Operates well with the meta search engine mention in this blogarticle.
goo.gl URL shortener
Google Calendar Checker
Google Mail Checker
gPDF | Open online PDF, DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PPT, RTF, ODT, ODS, ODP, CSV, etc. files using Google Docs and Zoho.
Keyboard Navigation
Offline Google Email | Beta software
Pendule | Web developer tools for Chrome
Pixlr-o-matic | online graphics editor
RSS Subscription Extension (by Google)
Silver Bird | proper twitter client
SEO & Website Analysis by Woorank
SmartVideo for YouTube | Better YouTube experience; provides ‘smart buffer’ for slow connections, auto loop, buffer preferences, quality selection, etc.
Speed Dial for Chrome, replaces new tab with your predefined visual bookmarks.
Turn Off the Lights | the entire page will be fading to dark, so you can watch the video as if you were in the cinema
Twitter Share this Page
UnOfficial Google Tasks … this version is way better than the official google tasks; faster loading times + customizable width and height
Window Resizer | resize browser window to emulate various screen resolutions

… and will probably be adding more over time. Actually I’m still searching for a suitable replacement of Firefox’s FireBug and Download Helper. So if anyone knows? Be sure to leave a comment!

Update 18Dec11: added some personal extensions, and sorted the list alphabetically

Update 07Jul12: yes! the new list is finally ready. Check it out here.