Baby, we’ve come a long way. I remember working with Internet Explorer or Netscape, browsing the web when it was just a matter of “looking for stuff”. Being connected to the internet today means so much more.
Recently, I shared my browser with another person who looked at the layout and said “What’s this stuff?” – pointing to the various icons that adorn the top of the browser.
As I started to explain, it really occured to me. I couldn’t get along with a vanilla web browser in this day and age. I’ve taken the browser and made it mine.
Depending upon the day, I might be working in Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Opera Next but there’s a common thread. I’ve added extensions or add-ons to make the browser mine. As I scroll through the extensions page, I may have 20 or 30 installed. From this big list, I figure that there’s at least five goodies that get me through the day.
ScribeFire – I use this daily. It’s my in browser blog editor. It’s got all the features that I could possibly need when composing posts like this one. Fully featured, and it does a great job with all that I need.
LastPass – Every service that I access on the web seems to have a customized spot that requires logging in to access. Confession time – there was a time years ago when I used the same password on every service. “cat”. OK, just kidding. Now, I let LastPass create a very secure password every time I create an accound and store it for me. It’s so nice to have the software remember passwords for me and let me keep my grey matter for other things.
Shareaholic – I’ll admit to being a sharer and I like to tuck away things that I find to my own services. Shareaholic lets me configure the services that I want to use and I’m just a right click away from assigning it appropriately whenever I visit a web page. It also serves as a launchpad to a bunch of other services like Diigo, Pinterest, Instapaper, Bit.ly, …
Adblock Plus – Like most people, I like to think I can have a bit of control over what I see when I visit a website. My use was really initiated by a slow internet connection. It’s bad enough to have to wait forever for content to appear; but it’s even worse when you’re slowed down by advertising.
Ghostery – I don’t know if there’s any way of perfectly protecting your privacy when connected, but there’s a sense of satisfaction when Ghostery indicates it’s blocking all of 1746 trackers.
There are a number of extensions that are installed but these are visibly active on a regular basis. I can’t imagine browsing without them. In fact, if I ever do, I just feel so handicapped and exposed.
What extensions make your good browsing experience great?
Related articles
- Blocking Ad Trackers With Ghostery (wearechange.org)
- History of Websites (chandlerj14.wordpress.com)
- How Ghostery breaks simple websites (troyhunt.com)
- Three tools to stop companies spying on your web browsing (zdnet.com)
- The Best Free Google Chrome Extensions 2013 (techsolitaire.wordpress.com)
- LastPass gets a makeover, gains a cleaner, sleeker design (betanews.com)
doug --- off the record 