Give Me a Lightbulb

My Favourite Browser Extensions

I’ve recently needed to “commission” a new laptop, and among other things that means setting up my browsers. Yes, browsers plural: for historical reasons, I tend to use some Mozilla-based browser (these days, typically Waterfox, although I always install Seamonkey for some reason) along with some Blink-engined browser (often Brave, but possibly Chromium or, at a stretch, Vivaldi). I don’t use “sync” for settings on these, although I do save import/export of bookmarks.

Over the years, I’ve come to rely on a small set of extensions to manage my browsing life and work-flow. Here they are, in no real order:

  1. Tabliss
    I like to manage my own home/new-tab page, and Tabliss (a recent discovery for me) is absolutely ideal. It looks great, and is nicely configurable.
    Tabliss/Mozilla | Tabliss/Blink

  2. Tab Copy
    Sometimes when researching this or that, I have a set of related tabs open that I want to save as a group. This extension copies the selected tabs to a Markdown list, which I can then save in my “saved for later” bookmark app (the wonderful Shaarli).
    Tab Copy/Mozilla | Tab Copy/Blink

  3. Reader View
    Reading long-form (or sometimes even short-form) text can be a trial on a webpage that is cluttered, or with the text size set too small (*cough* Paul Graham *cough*). Most browsers have some form of “simplified page for reading” built-in, but I prefer to set my own parameters for this experience, and this is the extension that does it best. (IMO.)
    Reader View/Mozilla | Reader View/Blink

  4. Ghostery
    I’ve come round to using an ad-blocker. Ghostery also manages the very annoying cookies-consent (or rejection!). For sites where I want to allow adverts, it’s easy to do so.
    Ghostery/Mozilla | Ghostery/Blink

  5. Browsec VPN
    I live in the UK. On Google Books, this means that sometimes long out-of-copyright books still get blocked. Browsec gives me convenient access to a USA-based VPN to allow me to see even these books, too.
    Browsec/Mozilla | Browsec/Blink

  6. DownThemAll
    The venerable DtA extension is perhaps less needed than it once was, but I still find myself using it regularly. It also makes “bulk” downloads very simple in certain situations.
    DownThemAll/Mozilla | DownThemAll/Blink

  7. Aardvark
    Sometimes a webpage just cries out for de-cluttering, especially if printing out hardcopy is needed. Aardvark is one of the oldest (to my knowledge) solutions for this, and fortunately it is being kept alive for both my browing environments.
    Aardvark Duex/Mozilla | Aardvark2/Blink

And one specific to Blink, Popup My Bookmarks. This isn’t needed for the Mozilla browsers, which allow me to collapse the bookmarks toolbar into the main. I have one “folder” with all my browsing bookmarks in it, and this mimics the Mozilla browser behaviour for Chrome. It makes bookmark access very handy, and bookmarks very compact.

All these make life-on-the-web so much more pleasant, at least in my experience! If you have any must-have extensions that you think I might enjoy too, please do let me know.

#webapp