20 Useful Chrome Extensions for Designers and Developers

Chrome Extensions are similar to the commonly known Adds-on in Firefox, it allows you to add more function to the browser and extend its features in order to help you in your work or in general web surfing.

Google Chrome is known as a simple UI browser and one of the fastest loading browsers comparing with other browsers such as Microsoft IE. This simplicity gives it an advantage as a reliable web browser.

This simplicity is due to its basic included functions that are commonly used by any web surfer without any complications. On the other side, this simplicity may not raise to the users expectations as they need more helpful functions to use while they spend most of their time on the web. Chrome extensions fill this gap by providing the ability for 3rd party developers to create chrome extensions that can be installed to the Google Chrome browser and give it many functions and ability.

Chrome extensions can add functions to developers, designer, social networks and general uses for the browser such RSS sync and favorite management. Here, we will try to give better focus on some of the useful chrome extensions for designers, developers, social networks and general internet usage.

Chrome Extensions for Designers

The Chrome Extensions for designers provide easy and reachable tools to achieve the daily tasks directly through the browser without the need to use large design applications.

Aviary

This quick screen capture add-on is important for designers, developers and bloggers. It creates a screen capture of the visible portion of any webpage and then open the capture in a basic image editor where you can do markup (draw arrows and rectangles), edit (crop, rotate and resize) and get the exact pixel colors of the image.

Image Cropper

This extension helps you to crop any images  directly through the browser.

MeasureIt!

This is a very useful Chrome Extension that helps you get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

Resolution Test

This is an extension for designers and developers to test web pages in different screen resolutions with an option to define your own resolutions.

IE Tab

This Windows based only on Chrome Extension lets you test your site on Microsoft IE without leaving Chrome as it opens in a new tab.

Lorem Ipsum Generator

Chrome Extension that generates random “Lorem Ipsum” text or random text for your website design.

Window Resizer

This Chrome Extension resizes browser window to emulate various screen resolutions. It is very useful in testing your design in different screen resolutions.

Webpage Screenshot

This is a fast & simple solution to save, share, print and edit screenshots of any web page. Capture the screen shot as PNG/JPG.

Eye Dropper

Eye Dropper is an open source extension which allows you to pick colors from web page’s images and contents.

Instant Image Editor

This is an easy to use method to edit images and background fast by alt + right-clicking it.

Chrome Extensions for Developers

Like designers, Chrome Extensions for developers provides easy-to-access developing tools that developer need when working with web based applications.

jQuery Shell

jQuery Shell allows you to run JavaScript and jQuery 1.4.4 multi-line scripts in the context of the web page.

Speed Tracer (by Google)

This Chrome Extension is created by Google and lets you identify and fix performance problems in your web applications. It visualizes metrics that are taken from low level instrumentation points inside of the browser and analyzes them as your application runs.

Csscan

This Chrome Extension offers a quick overview of CSS properties to the element the mouse cursor is hovering.

CSSViewer

This is a simple Chrome extension to view CSS properties.

Jsshell

This extension provides a small command window that allows executing jQuery commands.

Firebug Lite for Google Chrome

This is a simple Chrome Extension tool to perform Bug checking and it has a limited ability for modification. More ability and features can be found in larger version of Firebug.

XML Tree

This Chrome Extension lets you displays XML data in a user friendly way.

Editor Lite

This extension allows you to edit HTML easily, right inside your browser.

Pendule

This Chrome Extension provides various tools for developer through the browser.

Proxy Switchy

The Proxy Switchy let you switch between different proxies directly within your browser.

I hope you find these Chrome Extensions useful. Do not forget to share with us your ideas and if you know other useful extensions that may be useful for designers and developers let us know.