Extensions are coming to Google Chrome in the near future. The current developer build supports them, and there’s a lot to be excited about in the implementation -, you don’t have to restart the browser to use an extension you’ve just installed like you do in Firefox, for example.
On the other hand, the group of brave folks using the developer build don’t have nearly as many extensions to pick from yet. Firefox has the best lineup in the browser biz, so let’s play a wishing game; here are some Firefox extensions we’d love to see pop up in Chrome’s gallery, too. Some of our favorites are already in the works, but we haven’t yet heard a peep about any of the ones on this list.
If you’ve already thought of at least one plugin without which you just can’t make the switch from Firefox to Chrome, feel free to add to our list in the comments.
1. Tree Style Tabs
The proponents of Tree Style Tabs are not the majority, but they make two excellent points. Their extension of choice sorts tabs vertically along the left side of the website you’re viewing instead of at the top of the browser. This makes more efficient use of screen real estate on widescreen displays – which means most displays nowadays.
Even more notably, Tree Style Tabs displays your tabs in a tree (Surprise!), with each tab appearing one level beneath the tab from which you opened it. If you have 50 tabs going, that visual certainly makes them easier to manage.
2. IE Tab
There are some web applications that still only work properly and with all features intact in Internet Explorer – Microsoft Sharepoint, for example. Firefox’s IE Tab extension opens a native IE tab within the Firefox interface. It looks like any other Firefox tab for the most part, but under the hood it’s all IE. This feature is supported in the spinoff browser ChromePlus, but the original still lacks it. The extension is also great for developers who want to test sites cross browser without actually having to open two separate browsers.
Hey, while you’re at it, can we have a Firefox Tab too?
3. TwitterBar
It’s neat that Chrome will do Google searches from its address bar, but with Firefox’s TwitterBar you can type and send tweets there too. Jumping over to TweetDeck or your Twitter.com tab would use up two or three more clicks or key presses. You’ll hear no complaints here if you accidentally tweet “http://www.mashable.com” but be warned that it’s a possibility with this extension installed.
4. ScribeFire
You can use ScribeFire to write blog posts and publish them to WordPress, Movable Type, and a number of other platforms without browsing away from the site you’re blogging about. It pops up at the bottom of your Firefox window, and you can drag items from the site in front of you to the body of your post.
Chrome’s speed and stability make it attractive to bloggers, so ScribeFire or something like it would be right at home.
5. StumbleUpon
Delicious was among the first extensions to make its way to Chrome, and we like it, but we’re still hoping for an easy StumbleUpon solution to add to our social bookmarking options. Admittedly, there is a functional web-based workaround out there for Chrome, but it demands some URL tweaking, so it doesn’t match the Firefox extension’s ease of use by a longshot. That’s why we want a legit Chrome extension.
6. FaviconizeTab
This extension adds an option to reduce tabs to the size of a favicon (the tiny website icons seen in the address bar), removing the accompanying title text. It’s useful in the eternal battle to keep as many tabs visible as possible. You probably don’t need all that text; for example, Twitter and Facebook tabs should be recognizable by their iconic (pun only sort of intended) lower-case “t” and “f” logos, respectively. Chrome’s tabs are already more conservative with pixels than Firefox’s tabs are, but every little bit helps.
7. AutoCopy
AutoCopy sends text to the clipboard as soon as you select it, no keyboard shortcut necessary. You’ll never need to hit Control or Command + C to copy text, and if you have an application like CopyPaste Pro you can recover any clipboard items you might accidentally replace.
Many Linux distributions with out-of-the-now-proverbial-box clipboard history functionality ditched Control + C ages ago, and so have many Firefox users thanks to this extension. Chrome should be next.
8. LeechBlock
Never let it be said that Chrome users are not as productive as Firefox users. LeechBlock helps you manage your time with up to six groups of websites by blocking them when you know you shouldn’t be visiting them. You can limit your time with each group to specific hours of the day – like only being able to visit Facebook after you clock out of work at 5:00 PM – or you can tell the plugin to only let you access certain sites for so many minutes out of each hour.
9. Taboo
The self-described cure for “tabitis,” Taboo adds a button to save tabs for later (scrollbar location, form data, and all) instead of leaving them open to eat up memory and clutter the top of your browser. It also takes a snapshot of each saved tab so you can browse thumbnails when you’re ready to revisit the stuff you didn’t have the time to finish before. The usefulness of this extension is platform-agnostic, so the extension should be too. Let’s hope we see a Chrome clone soon.
10. Stylish
Google has run ads promoting Chrome’s many aesthetic themes, but with Stylish you can re-theme not just your browser but each website you visit.
It’s similar in principle to Greasemonkey; you download geek-made tweaks to the CSS of existing websites, and the plugin interprets those tweaks a
nd displays the sites differently as a result. We’ve already pointed out some of the best examples of what this extension can do for Firefox users, and we’d love to see it on Chrome in the near future.
What other Firefox extensions would you love to see on Chrome? Let us know in the comments.
Cheers!…
