Web Browser Tips
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Recently I’ve begun using a few extensions that make my web browser more enjoyable.
uBlock Origin
I have two Google Chrome profiles: one with this extension and one without. Advertising is essential to the web and my career, but it is also full of landmines. By using uBlock some of the time, I get to compare the ads/no-ads experiences. See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
Dark Reader
Dark Reader ” inverts brightness of web pages and aims to reduce eyestrain while browsing the web” and does a very good job of it. Combined with Night Shift or f.lux, it makes nighttime computer use much more pleasant. See https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader
Newsfeed Eradicator
I find Facebook unavoidable for groups, events and marketplace, but I block the newsfeed to avoid distractions. See https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator
Other Extensions
I use a few other extensions too, though less frequently.
- Alexa Traffic Rank “The Official Alexa Traffic Rank Extension, providing Alexa Traffic Rank and site Information when clicked.” Google’s
related:operator sometimes fails me, so now I use the Alexa extension to find similar sites. - Allow-Control-Allow-Origin: * “Allows to you request any site with ajax from any source. Adds to response ‘Allow-Control-Allow-Origin: *’ header” I use this for development occasionally. It is required for my Analyze Boston SQL Client.
- Cite This For Me: Web Citer “Automatically create website citations in the APA, MLA 8, Chicago, or Harvard referencing styles at the click of a button.” For sharing content via Wikis and emails, citations are superieor to links because they contain the title, date, publisher and more — so this extension simplifies sharing them.
- Earth View from Google Earth “Experience a beautiful image from Google Earth every time you open a new tab.” Does what it says…
- h264ify “Makes YouTube stream H.264 videos instead of VP8/VP9 videos.” I get irritated when my laptop fans start buzzing and this extension forces Youtube to use H.264 streams with hardware accelerated decoding.
- History Trends “Displays interactive charts and statistics of your entire browsing history.” I like this mainly to see how my browsing compares to a broader ranking, like the Alexa Top 500.