14 Useful Google Chrome Extensions for Developers
Google’s Chrome is indisputably the most prevalent web browser right now. Google’s wide-spread effect on web services has made Chrome the most used browser for web development. One of the key factors is its massive library of extensions that actually sets it apart from the rest, especially for web designers and developers. With the built-in developer tools, there seems to be no further need for more tools.
Subsequently, here we are enlisting the 14 best and most useful chrome extensions for developers for a more productive and successful web development.
Web Developer
The Web Developer extension is a vital Chrome extension for developers and designers. The chrome extension web developer has numerous convenient tools a developer can use in their everyday work. It lets you to easily add outlines to elements just by clicking, displaying rulers, finding all broken images on a page and more.
The web developer extension for Chrome adds a toolbar with a complete suite of web development in your browser. The tools presented by this extension are divided into 10 separate tabs like - Cookies, CSS, Disable, Forms, Images, Information, Miscellaneous, Outline, Tools and Resize. These tools consist of disabling cookie manager, CSS property viewer and editor, form and image manipulation, window resizer, cache management, page ruler, property inspector, JavaScript/plug-ins/pop-ups/notifications etc.
Window Resizer
Window Resizer helps you simulate various screen resolutions of all popular devices like iPhones, iPad mac etc. This is fairly helpful for developers to test out their layouts on different screen size devices and validate if their responsive media queries code is working as expected. For a more precise and in-depth responsive testing, you would need real mobile browsers to validate your website version.
You can effortlessly test your design layout on diverse browser resolutions with this extension. You can customize what resolutions you want to display by changing the window's position, width, height, pre-set icon etc. Window Resizer offers an option to launch it as a pop-up, letting you to switch through various screen resolutions and see if your media breakpoints are working as anticipated. You can also rotate your screen and customize the pre-sets.
Source: Window Resizer Extension
Ghostery
Ghostery is a Chrome extension which detects tracking pixels, trackers and any other embedded snippet on a website. You can instantly see which plug-ins and trackers are installed on the web page that you have visited. There is no registration or sign up mandatory to use this Chrome extension.
Ghostery has a built-in ad blocker to remove irritating advertisements from a website, tracking safety to protect your data and to block third party website from tracking along with page speed booster and an optimizer to make your browsing experience a pleasant one. It also has a custom insights dashboard that you can customize to view the relevant information.
Source: https://usersnap.com/blog/chrome-extensions-for-developers/
Wappalyzer
This remarkable extension is a cross-platform tool that reveals the names of technologies used to create a particular website. Wappalyzer identifies the software installed on any particular website. It automatically detects technologies like site generators, frameworks, libraries, plug-ins, CMS, databases, server software, widgets, analytics tools, etc. This Chrome extension for developers and designers is extremely useful for making appealing websites.
Source:Wappalyzer
Clear Cache
Clear Cache clears your cache and browsing data with a single click and helps by evading the process of going through your browser settings to perform this action. It is simple, fast, easy. Moreover, you can customize just how much data you want to clear on the extension option settings – Cookies, Downloads, App Cache, Cache, File Systems, Form Data, History, Indexed DB, Local Storage, Plug-in Data and Passwords. You can either delete cookies altogether or for some specific domains. It is one of the most convenient Chrome extensions for developers, designers and everybody else.
LambdaTest Chrome Extension
LambdaTest Chrome Extension can be utilized to take full page screenshots of webpages across different desktop and mobile browsers from your browser with just one click. These screenshots help in fast-tracking cross browser compatibility testing of the web pages and websites. LambdaTest offers a cloud-based platform to perform cross browser testing on numerous real browsers and browser versions for diverse devices that results in an alluring, robust, and cross browser compatible website. For desktop devices, you can test on Windows and MacOS and for mobile devices, you can test on Android and iOS.
ColorZilla
ColorZilla is one of the oldest color picker extension. ColorZilla lets you to get the color of any pixel on any website. ColorZilla enables you to get a color reading from any pixel on the browser on the go and to paste it in any other program in RGB HEX formats. Additionally, ColorZilla keeps the color history of your recently picked colors and it has a webpage color analyzer that gives you the color palette of any site.
Source: ColorZilla Chrome Extension
JSON Viewer
If you extensively work with APIs and particularly RestFul APIs or anything that involves a load of JSON data then JSON highlighter serves a good purpose as a Chrome extension for developers.
It is much easier to read JSON in tree-view, rather than in its raw state. This Chrome extension JSON Viewer helps you to view JSON documents in the browser. Rather than viewing vast JSON file data in an awkward scribbled format in your browser, JSON viewer helps to arrange JSON data in a visually appealing tree format that you can directly view in your browser window. It enhances efficiency by allowing syntax highlighting, collapsible nodes, customizable themes, clickable URLs and more.
Source: JSON Viewer Chrome Extension
CSS Viewer
CSSViewer is a simple CSS property viewer. CSS Viewer extension extracts all CSS properties and displays them inside a floating window in an organized way. You can simply hover over any element on the web page you want to inspect and the CSS viewer floating window will list all the key CSS properties:
- Font and Text (font-size, font-weight, font-family, line-height, text-decoration, text-align)
- Color and Background (color, background-color, background-position)
- Box Model Properties (height, width, padding, margin)
- Positioning
- Effects (transforms and transitions)
- Miscellaneous properties
Session Manager
Session Manager is one the most powerful Chrome extension for developers and designers for browser tabs management. It protects your browsing state and lets you re-open the session later. It is particularly useful if you open the same web pages over and over again.
It also offers a bookmark manager with a simple interface. It helps you to save sessions and restore them later when you open them. Hence, avoiding clutter and keeping memory free. It lets you to manage all tabs in one page, organize them by topic and also offers fast search to look for a specific tab. If by accident you close your browser window or your system crashes, you need not worry about losing your session. Sessions Manager will restore all your tabs.
Source: Session Manager
IE Tab
If you want to do some manual IE testing and don’t want to install all kind of different Internet Explorer versions? The IE Tab Chrome extension emulates IE by using the IE rendering engine directly in Chrome. You can test your website for IE6, IE7, IE8 or IE9 directly in your chrome browser. Presently, the IE Tab Chrome extension is only available for Windows.
Source: https://usersnap.com/blog/chrome-extensions-for-developers/
Fontface Ninja
Developers rely on this sophisticated extension called Font Face Ninja to easily identify all the fonts being used on a webpage, instead of inspecting elements in Chrome dev tools to find out the name of fonts being used. You simply have to hover over any text element on the webpage that you need to identify. A pop-up up window will display the name of the font face along with a small preview window. You can bookmark your favourite font faces and save them to use later.
Lorem Ipsum Generator
Lorem Ipsum generator provides an easy and quick way to create default text. Certainly, this is fast if you need some default text as a placeholder. This is a special extension generator creates mock business content text. And, makes your layouts more visually alluring and presentable to clients.
Githunt
With Githunt extension, you can look through the repositories for any technology that you like and for any duration of time. By default, it shows the trending repositories for the last week. And as you scroll and you are presented with the popular repositories of the consecutive past weeks.
You just have to select how do you want to see the repositories (monthly, weekly or yearly) and the language. It will remember your choice and will show you the trending repositories in that category whenever you will open the new tab.
Source: https://blog.prototypr.io/11-best-chrome-extension-for-developers-programmers-bf5615f8de3
Conclusion
Lots of new exciting extensions are released every week by Chrome developers and created specifically for web developers. These Chrome extensions differ from basic utility and design tools to development tools specifically for various languages and frameworks to save you a great deal of time and enhance your productivity to an entirely new level.