Google Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world, surpassing all of its competitors by the widest of margins. According to Statista, the global market share of Chrome among the leading desktop browsers has grown from 50% in 2015 to just short of 70% in June 2020. Over the past three years, this share has increased by 11%.
Google Chrome has extensions that help add functionality to the browser, and there are tons for web designers to use for help in designing web sites. Here are 13 Google Chrome extensions that web designers and developers should check out:
Firebug Lite
Firebug Lite is a great extension that allows you to view the HTML, CSS, or Javascript code of any web site. A great feature of Firebug Lite is the ability to modify web site traits and behavior to preview how the changes would look before you actually implement them. One neat trick is if you highlight a specific area of a web page that you are trying to figure out the code for, and then you right-click, you will see an option to Inspect Element. When you press it, you will be able to see the HTML/CSS/Javascript code for that element.
Chrome Editor
HTML editor that allows you to code right in Google Chrome. It also support jQuery and Flash. You can also debug your code right in the browser. Chrome Editor also has a syntax highlighter that you can turn on/off, so it’s easier for you to visually separate the different elements by color. When you are satisfied with your code, you can save it locally to your system. Another useful feature is that it support HTML5.
Essential SEO Toolkit — A Comprehensive SEO Chrome Addon
This is a great extension to perform website and SEO analysis Chrome users will find valuable. It contains an array of tools not only for SEO professionals but also for web developers and marketers. The Essential SEO Toolkit allows you to analyze website speed, traffic, and backlinks. In addition, you can use this Google Chrome SEO plugin to identify the amounts of social shares of a specific URL.
SEO Checker Tool – Another SEO Google Chrome Extension to Help You Boost Page Rank
Thanks to this free SEO addon to Chrome, web developers can instantly perform a SEO audit of a page. Just one click and you will know if a page is Google-friendly or not. The SEO Checker Tool will generate a detailed SEO report with the score that a page currently has. This report will also list any duplicate links, loading times, and other essential information. This is definitely one of the best Google Chrome extensions for SEO.
Chrome HTML editor WebStudio for Webpages
There’s no need to download and install an HTML editor to create new web pages or modify existing ones. The HTML editor WebStudio can perform all the essential editing operations right inside a browser. This Chrome HTML editor allows web developers to change font size, font color, add hyperlinks, change paragraph indents, and manipulate the code of a page in any other way.
Eye Dropper
Allows you to get the HTML color code of any color from any web page. It also has its own color palette that you can choose from. It’s a very simple but useful Google Chrome extension.
Magic CSS – A Live CSS Editor Chrome Users Would Appreciate
We know that CSS and HTML are like flesh and bones, complementing each other beautifully. Magic CSS is a CSS Editor for Chrome that allows you to perform a wide range of operations on your CSS code and see the changes in real time straight in the browser. It’s not limited to CSS, but also works with preprocessors — Less/Sass. The tool autosaves all the modifications either in the site’s local storage or the browser’s extension storage.
WebRank SEO — a Google Chrome SEO Plugin Well Worth Giving a Try
Let’s take a look at another SEO Google Chrome extension that deserves your attention. WebRank SEO is a valuable tool that provides traffic graphs as well as information about the server location, backlinks, and indexed pages in Bing, Google and other search engines. This SEO analysis tool for Chrome also shines when it comes to comparing your website with your competitors.
SEO & Website Analysis
SEO & Website Analysis performs an in-depth SEO analysis. One great feature is the color-coding for each SEO element. Additionally, it gives you tips on how to turn the red and yellow areas into green. You can export the data as a PDF. There is also a widget for the extension.
HTML CSS Live Editor — Leverage the Power of the Key Web Technologies in One Centralized Location
This handy Chrome HTML and CSS editor enables you to see the code you write execute immediately within the browser window. It also has a number of features to simplify and speed up the web development process. These include marking certain portions of your code for reference, code line numbers, automatic alignment of tags, and others. This is a CSS editor Chrome users have installed over 10,000 times. You could give it a shot, too.
MeasureIt!
MeasureIt! makes it easy for you to quickly find out the dimensions of any item on a web page. This is especially useful when you are using a template, and you are having a hard time figuring out what dimensions your images should be. I wish that I had known about this Google Chrome extension on a few occasions. It would have saved me many headaches.
Resolution Test
If you want to ensure that your web site will look on different screen resolutions, then Resolution Test is a useful Google Chrome extension. You can pick and choose what resolutions to view your web site, so you can see if it looks ok on different screens. You can also define your own screen resolution.
Live CSS Tester — Make Sure Your CSS Code is Perfectly Valid
Testing is a very important stage in the web development process. The earlier it begins, the more robust and error-free the final product is. Live CSS Tester allows you to test your CSS code by adding it to a web page through web dev tools or a popup and see it execute in real time.
This CSS Editor–Chrome extension includes a lot of useful features. You can switch to the dark mode, upload or download CSS, remember the last input, enable or disable CSS, and do other things.
React Developer Tools
If you are a React developer, this extension to Chrome is exactly what you need. It’s added to the Dev Tools and allows you to see the hierarchy of React components, which, as you know, can get quite complicated. Just select a specific component and get all the information about it, including its props and state.