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10 Most Useful Chrome Extensions for Developers and Designers

Working in a rapidly growing digital marketing industry, the team at Online Optimism is always looking for tools to help streamline development as well as increase productivity. In this article, I’ll discuss the Chrome extensions our web design and development team uses to help us do our work faster.

What Are Chrome Extensions?

Google Chrome is often considered to be the best browser in the world. What makes it popular is its simplicity, high-quality browsing service, and options to add more features as the user prefers.

Chrome extensions are small programs that add new features to your browser and make it more customizable. They enable users to tailor Chrome functionality and behavior to their individual needs or preferences.

10 Chrome Extensions Our Developers and Designers Love. 

1. What Font 

    For web designers, fonts are kind of a big deal. What Font is the easiest way to find what fonts are being used on various web pages. Once you add this extension, you just need to hover over the text to detect its font. You can also detect services used for serving the web fonts, such as Google Fonts.

2. ColorZilla 

This is a simple yet very useful extension for both designers and developers. You can pick any color used on any web page using an eye-dropper tool and copy its color code. You can also analyze the different colors of a web page and create a color palette for the page. 

3. Awesome Screenshot 

This extension makes screen sharing fast and easy. This tool allows you to take screenshots and screen video, which can be edited, commented on it, and shared with anyone. It is fast enough to let you share and annotate anything you are discussing over video conference.

4. Pesticide for Chrome 

This extension can be very helpful when trying to solve a layout problem in CSS. When we are trying to solve any issue, all we want is to check where every single element is outlined on the page. This extension outlines every element on the page in a different color, which can be very helpful in identifying the boundary and overlay of each element. 5. Visual Inspector

Visual Inspector is the ultimate in-browser design tool for designers to inspect or edit live web pages without coding. This extension allows you to inspect and edit website text, typography, and colors. You can also download the changes as CSS and PNG and share them with others.

6. Window Resizer

This is an awesome extension for building and testing responsive websites or applications. The most common screen sizes are available (for laptop, desktop, and mobile), but you can also enter in your own customized window sizes.

7. Web Developer Toolbar

This tool is a MUST-HAVE for web developers, search engine optimizers, or anyone who works closely with websites. This adds a little toolbar with a bunch of options to optimize your website. It is really helpful when you are trying to find the element that is causing an issue on your site. With one click, you can disable plugins, images, CSS, or Javascript. As you can see in the image below, each section has a couple of sub-tools that can come in handy when doing website optimization.

oo-webdevtool-extension

 

8. Javascript and CSS Code Beautifier

If you are a web developer, then chances are you will look at source code daily. And when you view it in the browser, by default it’s not always readable. This extension will take the source code—whether it’s CSS or Javascript—and make it more readable. In my opinion, everyone who deals with CSS and Javascript should use this extension! Below are screenshots of a Javascript file before and after using this extension. 

Before Beautifier :

Clicking the Beautify Now! button provides a cleaner-readable version of such a complex file, as shown below. 

chrome-extension-blog

9. BuiltWith

This is the perfect extension for those who want to know what technologies are in use on any given website. This tool gives you insights about the widgets, forms, and technologies used on a website just by clicking on the extension icon. Many times, I come across a beautiful, functional website, and it’s hard to guess the technologies it’s using. In such times, this tool is very useful. It generates reports on what’s being used in the website, breaking down different services,  tools, and functions the website is using. With the use of this tool, you can investigate the strategies and tools used by competitors, by peers, and within marketing niches. This gives you a great start to figuring out what’s being used there and how you can implement and improve upon it yourself. When you click the built with icon it gives the report of the site shown in image below. 

Builtwith-Onlineoptimism

10. Clear Cache

This is a very helpful extension, as you can clear your cache and browsing data with a single click. And you don’t even have to deal with frustrating confirmation dialogs or pop-ups! This tool allows you to customize your preferences as well, such as what and how much of your data you want to clear. 

Ready to Save Tons of Time and Increase Productivity?

Chrome releases dozens of exciting extensions every few weeks, many for designers and developers. Now that you know how Chrome extensions can save you time, you can spend your time where it’s most needed, like developing beautiful, functional websites. Keep exploring for extensions that can improve your productivity!