New Technology Reviews!.: extensions

10 best Safari extensions

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.youtube-200-200.jpg"> Since they first appeared on the scene, Safari extensions have been springing up everywhere. While the list of available items isn't anywhere near as long as the App Store's, it can still be tricky deciding which are the best ones. So we've done the hard work for you – read on to discover our 10 favourites. You'll need Safari 5.0.1 or later to use extensions. If you haven't got it, run Software Update, then fire up the latest version and go to Safari > Safari Extensions Gallery. To install any listed here, just locate it then click the Install button below its name. But if you find extensions elsewhere on the web, download them, double-click the file and simply click Install in the dialog that appears. They'll install instantly, but some may require you to quit and relaunch Safari to activate them. Most have settings you can tweak by going to Safari > Preferences > Extensions. One word of caution: a developer who was up to no good could potentially put malicious code into an extension, so only download them from reputable sources. Any that appear on Apple's Safari Extensions Gallery will be fine. <a href="http://blog.lexfriedman.com/post/932156833/be-careful-with-your-safari-extensions-and-turn-off">For more see here</A>. 1. Mini Google Maps <img alt="Mini google maps" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.minigooglemaps-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> <a href="http://maps.google.com/">Google Maps</A> is fantastic. We constantly find ourselves opening it up when we're browsing – whether it's to find out where a local news story happened, or to plan our route to a restaurant. Its great, but having to load it in a new tab is a pain, especially if you're trying to remember an unfamiliar postcode or road name. This extension adds a button to your toolbar, which you click to open a map and search bar. You can drag the window around the site you're viewing so that it doesn't obscure the address. 2. Reload button <img alt="Reload button" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.reload-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> This is one for the nostalgists. Early versions of Safari had a Reload button at the left-hand end of the toolbar alongside the Back and Forward ones. It was removed in Safari 4, to be replaced by a little icon at the end of the address bar. This extension puts the Reload button back where you like it. Because it doesn't double as a Stop Loading button, however, it leaves the icon at the end of the address bar in place, should you need it. 3. Instapaper Beyond <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/">Instapaper</A> is a fantastic way to save articles on the web to read later. This little extension enhances the service's, so rather than doing everything with your mouse, it speeds things up using simple keyboard shortcuts. Sign into your account with this extension installed and you'll see the top article is highlighted yellow. Press H at any time to see a list of the commands. As you get to know these, you'll be amazed how much more quickly you can work your way around Instapaper. 4. Get the best shopping deal <img alt="Shopping deals" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.boxout1-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> It's well-known that shopping online is generally cheaper than on the high street, but how can you be sure you're getting the best price? Rather than you searching through a bunch of different websites, have the InvisibleHand Extension do the work for you. As the name suggests, you'll forget it's there until you're browsing a product page. At this point, it'll flash up a yellow bar with a raft of information about the item. First and foremost, it tells you if you've found the best deal, or how much you can save if you shop elsewhere. There's a link to the product page on the cheapest seller's site, alongside a drop-down menu of other possible retailers. This menu lists the product's price and the postage costs. Simply click the retailer's name in the list to be taken to their web page where you can buy the product. 5. Colour coded HTML If you're a developer or ever have to work with web code in any way, this handy little extension is one you should add to your arsenal. Rather than viewing a page's code in Safari's minimalist Source window, BetterSource colour-codes HTML and adds line numbers. It opens the code in a new tab, however it doesn't support JavaScript. 6. MouseGestures <img alt="Mouse gestures" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.mousegestures-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> Speed up your web browsing by using your mouse for common tasks. So rather than clicking the Back button or hitting Backspace, simply hold down the middle mouse button and move your pointer left. There are 12 different commands you can use, although you're limited to four gestures – up, down, left and right. After you've installed this one, you need to restart Safari to get it working. And we suggest you don't change the Execute gestures with: drop-down from Middle Button, since using either left- or right-click alternatives could conflict with dragging or contextual menus. 7. Exposer <img alt="Exposer" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.exposer-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> If you've got lots of tabs open, or several from the same site, finding the one you're after can become time consuming. The more tabs you open, the shorter each one's title becomes, making it even harder. Exposer brings Mac OS X's Exposé feature to your browser tabs, enabling you to bring up a visual grid of all the tabs you've got open in that window. Hover your mouse over each for a larger view, then simply click the one you want to bring that tab to the front. You can use Exposer via the button it places in your toolbar, or through a shortcut key, which you can define in its settings. 8. A Cleaner YouTube <img alt="Cleaner youtube" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.youtube-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> YouTube is all about the video, but unless you switch to fullscreen mode, whatever you're watching is surrounded by related videos, like and dislike buttons, social media controls, comments and more distractions. A Cleaner YouTube strips all that away, leaving you with a minimalist interface built around the video, so you can watch it without diversions. You still get a search bar and the essential controls for the video, but all the rest is hidden behind a link at the bottom of the screen. So if you want to see the comments, embed code, sharing buttons and so on, it's all just a click away. 9. Tweet from Safari <img alt="Tweet from safari" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/MacFormat/MAC%20228/MAC228.tut_safari.boxout2-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> If you're a heavyweight Twitter user, chances are you'll use a dedicated client, such as Tweetie or TweetDeck. Tweet for Safari isn't designed to replace such programs, but it means you're always in touch with what's going on in the Twitter cloud. Click any of the trending terms and a column appears showing you relevant tweets. There's also a search bar and a button to create a new tweet about the page you're viewing. Handily, if you've got Tweetie for Mac installed, you can go into the Twitter for Safari preferences and tell it to use that for your tweets. The toolbar shows Twitter usernames related to the page you're viewing – head over to <a href="http://www.macformat.co.uk/">www.macformat.co.uk</A> and you'll see '@MacFormat' appears. Click each username to see the person's tweets. 10. Invisible status bar When you're browsing the web, the status bar at the base of your Safari window will often lie redundant. The only time you're likely to use it is when you hover over a link, to see where you're about to be whisked off to. Install Invisible Status Bar and up pops a bar whenever you hover over a link; it vanishes again when you move on.

10 best Safari extensions

Since they first appeared on the scene, Safari extensions have been springing up everywhere. While the list of available items isn't an...

24 best browser extensions

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/PC%20Plus/PCP%20300/PCP300.feat1browser.extensions1-200-200.jpg"> The ability to add features to browsers makes them the most powerful applications on your screen, but with so many to choose from, where do you start? Too many and you'll slow down your system; not enough and you're wasting an opportunity. Here's our guide to the ones you can't afford to be without. 1. Greasemonkey Greasemonkey runs user-written scripts to completely alter many of your favourite websites, giving them a new look, invisibly mashing up different services and adding brand new features. Visit the website at <a href="http://userscripts.org/">www.userscripts.org</A> to see what's possible. It's available for Chrome and Firefox, and is built into Opera as UserJS. 2. AdBlock Plus Many of us are virtually immune to online ads by now, but if you get a site that goes just that little bit too far, <a href="http://adblockplus.org/en/">AdBlock Plus</A> is the best way to slap it into shape. It strips out everything from pop-ups to embedded Flash animations, making your browsing fast, smooth and less likely to make you feel the urge to reach for a Pepsi, the cool, refreshing choice of the new generation. As a bonus, it'll also strip out any malware too. 3. CooIiris This is not just a media browser, but it's an incredibly impressive one too. <a href="http://www.cooliris.com/">CoolIris</A> creates 3D walls of content from your favourite social sites, which doesn't sound like much until you see it in action. Finding that one photo or video is so much easier when you can see all the options stretching out into infinity. It works on your desktop files too, giving you a great way to read everything. 4. Feedly An alternative way of reading Google Reader, now in Firefox and Chrome. Feedly reparses your RSS feeds into a magazine-style format, making it less effective as a dedicated research tool or if you have to read every last story, but much smoother if you just want to see what's going on right now. An icon on your toolbar brings it straight up, and if you want to go back into full research mode, it's easy to return to regular Google Reader. Get it from <a href="http://www.feedly.com/">www.feedly.com</A>. 5. Web Developer Toolbar As the name suggests, you won't need this one if you never play with HTML and CSS, but if you do, you can't afford to be without it. Now for both Firefox and Chrome, it adds all the options you need to troubleshoot your designs, from highlighting individual elements to poking at the CSS directly. Get it from <a href="http://chrispederick.com/">www.chrispederick.com</A>. 6. NoScript Scripting technologies have made the web a more powerful place, but they sometimes just get in the way. <a href="http://noscript.net/">NoScript</A> lets you switch them on and off per page, but because it uses a whitelist to decide when it kicks in, you never need to worry about a rogue page jumping on your back before you can block it. It's only available for Firefox at the moment. 7. DownThemAll One for hardcore file junkies, this pulls every file from a web page at a click, saving you the effort of going to each link, clicking 'Save Target As', and pointing it to a directory. It's for Firefox only at the moment, <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201/">from here</A>. Chrome has its own equivalents though, including Download Selection, Download All that does the same thing as DTA, and a range of assorted downloaders for specific sites. 8. FireFTP A complete FTP client inside Firefox. It's not as good as something like Filezilla if you use FTP a lot, for either website management or downloading lots of files, but if it's only an occasional thing these days, it's great to have something like this on hand to handle the gruntwork. It's for Firefox only, and <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684/">available from here</A>. The closest Chrome equivalent that's currently available is <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bbmifjhjmficeaeniaaadblfoddfdnme?hl=en">Chrome FTP</A>, although that's considerably less polished at this point. 9. Instapaper Not an extension, but a bookmark that should work on anything – although you can get plug-ins as well. Instapaper stores any long articles you find and don't have time to read. Best of all, as it's a web service, there are viewers available for almost everything, including any web-enabled computer. Get it from <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/">www.instapaper.com</A>. 10. All-In-One-Gestures Gesture support has to be used to be fully appreciated. Opera pioneered it in web browsers, and when you're used to it, it's impossible to go back. Navigate, close windows and more with simple sweeps of the mouse and it becomes an almost subconscious act. If this specific plug-in doesn't work, there are others, although Opera still has the edge in terms of fluidity due to its built-in support. Get it <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12/">from here</A>. 11. Delicious Bookmarks Another bookmark-based extension, in both ways. Syncing bookmarks is fine, but if you're like us, you quickly end up with far too many to manage. <a href="http://www.delicious.com/">Delicious</A> is the perfect way to sort, share and tag anything of interest online. You can see what other people have said about them as well, and import them into almost any web browser or other link collection. 12. StumbleUpon On the other hand, if you're having trouble simply finding something good to read online, sit back and let <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/">StumbleUpon</A> show you the way. Tell it what you're interested in and it finds you a page that might qualify. You can also add your own favourite sites to the collection, bookmark any of interest for later use, and comment or read comments on sites from other users. 13. AutoProxy Proxy servers are a godsend if you want to access content you're not sup… to keep your online life private. And nothing else. Because that would be Very Naughty. <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11009/">AutoProxy</A> lets you switch back and forth between identities with ease. You'll still have to track down the right proxy server for what you want to do, and you should be careful that you switch it off before doing anything crucial like online banking, just to be safe. 14. Evernote WebClipper This is the ideal way of keeping snippets of interest, images or any other clippable content from around the web. With the free Evernote package, you get 40MB a month, which is plenty for web content, and you can access it from any machine or on the major mobile platforms. An IE plug-in installs with the desktop client (not required, but very helpful for managing your note collection), with Firefox/Chrome plug-ins available separately. Get it from <a href="http://www.evernote.com/">www.evernote.com</A>. 15. FoxyTunes Don't waste time switching away from the web just because a Justin Bieber song 'accidentally' found its way into your music library. With FoxyTunes, you can control almost every major music player from within your browser – which, despite the name, can also be IE. Sorry, no Chrome. Media is one area where Firefox definitely still has the advantage, with Chrome's only real plug-ins being for online players and simple look-up checks of services like Spotify's library. Get it from <a href="http://www.foxytunes.com/">www.foxytunes.com</A>. 16. IE Tab Not many of us use IE by choice, but sometimes there's no other option. IE Tab lets you open up a window in <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10909/">Firefox</A> or <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hehijbfgiekmjfkfjpbkbammjbdenadd?hl=en">Chrome</A>, but using the IE rendering engine instead. It gives you all the benefits, and is easily closed afterwards. <img alt="Chrome extensions" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Plus/PCP%20300/PCP300.feat1browser.extensions2-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> 17. Session Manager Most of us need more than one website at a time. Session Manager helps you recover from crashes by bringing up complete sets of tabs. It's available now for <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2324/">Firefox</A> and the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bbcnbpafconjjigibnhbfmmgdbbkcjfi?hl=en">Chrome</A> browser. 18. PrintPDF You can download web pages easily enough, but if you want to make sure you see them properly on another platform, PDFs are the answer. PrintPDF is a tool that exports them directly. For Firefox, <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5971/">see here</A>. Chrome users should <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bkanhckocooacphbnclgcndnpfpoppdk?hl=en">go to here</A>. 19. Karbon FLV Downloader This is a great way to download FLV video files and MP3s embedded in web page code. For FLVs, you'll need a dedicated Flash player to watch them later on, at your leisure. You can <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/54453/">download it from here</A>. 20. Bit.ly The most popular of the URLshortener tools out there, Bit.ly takes any link you give it and crunches it down into a more Twitter/instant message-friendly format. For Firefox, <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/194382/">go to here</A>. For Chrome, you need to head over to <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fnenemkolgpgpkkbjgedagmdefkdakpm?hl=en">here</A>. 21. Remember The Milk One of the best task managers around, integrating beautifully with Gmail and available on iPhone and Android. The Firefox and Chrome plug-ins connect it with Gmail too. See <a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com/">www.rememberthemilk.com </A>to download it. 22. Chrome Reader One of the most bizarre and annoying things we've noticed about Chrome is that Google makes it incredibly fiddly to subscribe to feeds. This simple but incredibly effective plug-in fixes that problem immediately. You can download it <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lojpenhmoajbiciapkjkiekmobleogjc?hl=en">from here</A>. 23. Unhide Passwords Security is rather pointless when you're alone, and Unhide Passwords removes the starring-out so you can see what you're typing. It's for <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/462/">Firefox only</A>, but there's a Chrome equivalent available from <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ikohpdigmejobealimgaomhikpoebjgb?hl=en">here</A>. 24. Copy Without Formatting When you copy text from the internet, it retains its formatting when you paste it. This add-on sits in Chrome and gives you a shortcut that only spits out plain text. Find it <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cekbgkmeapobkbadclnkjfjdbpbcaobd?hl=en">here</A>, or get the handy Firefox equivalent <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14006/">from here</A>.

24 best browser extensions

The ability to add features to browsers makes them the most powerful applications on your screen, but with so many to choose from, where do ...

24 best browser extensions

<img src="http://cdn.mos.techradar.com//Review%20images/PC%20Plus/PCP%20300/PCP300.feat1browser.extensions1-200-200.jpg"> The ability to add features to browsers makes them the most powerful applications on your screen, but with so many to choose from, where do you start? Too many and you'll slow down your system; not enough and you're wasting an opportunity. Here's our guide to the ones you can't afford to be without. 1. Greasemonkey Greasemonkey runs user-written scripts to completely alter many of your favourite websites, giving them a new look, invisibly mashing up different services and adding brand new features. Visit the website at <a href="http://userscripts.org/">www.userscripts.org</A> to see what's possible. It's available for Chrome and Firefox, and is built into Opera as UserJS. 2. AdBlock Plus Many of us are virtually immune to online ads by now, but if you get a site that goes just that little bit too far, <a href="http://adblockplus.org/en/">AdBlock Plus</A> is the best way to slap it into shape. It strips out everything from pop-ups to embedded Flash animations, making your browsing fast, smooth and less likely to make you feel the urge to reach for a Pepsi, the cool, refreshing choice of the new generation. As a bonus, it'll also strip out any malware too. 3. CooIiris This is not just a media browser, but it's an incredibly impressive one too. <a href="http://www.cooliris.com/">CoolIris</A> creates 3D walls of content from your favourite social sites, which doesn't sound like much until you see it in action. Finding that one photo or video is so much easier when you can see all the options stretching out into infinity. It works on your desktop files too, giving you a great way to read everything. 4. Feedly An alternative way of reading Google Reader, now in Firefox and Chrome. Feedly reparses your RSS feeds into a magazine-style format, making it less effective as a dedicated research tool or if you have to read every last story, but much smoother if you just want to see what's going on right now. An icon on your toolbar brings it straight up, and if you want to go back into full research mode, it's easy to return to regular Google Reader. Get it from <a href="http://www.feedly.com/">www.feedly.com</A>. 5. Web Developer Toolbar As the name suggests, you won't need this one if you never play with HTML and CSS, but if you do, you can't afford to be without it. Now for both Firefox and Chrome, it adds all the options you need to troubleshoot your designs, from highlighting individual elements to poking at the CSS directly. Get it from <a href="http://chrispederick.com/">www.chrispederick.com</A>. 6. NoScript Scripting technologies have made the web a more powerful place, but they sometimes just get in the way. <a href="http://noscript.net/">NoScript</A> lets you switch them on and off per page, but because it uses a whitelist to decide when it kicks in, you never need to worry about a rogue page jumping on your back before you can block it. It's only available for Firefox at the moment. 7. DownThemAll One for hardcore file junkies, this pulls every file from a web page at a click, saving you the effort of going to each link, clicking 'Save Target As', and pointing it to a directory. It's for Firefox only at the moment, <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/201/">from here</A>. Chrome has its own equivalents though, including Download Selection, Download All that does the same thing as DTA, and a range of assorted downloaders for specific sites. 8. FireFTP A complete FTP client inside Firefox. It's not as good as something like Filezilla if you use FTP a lot, for either website management or downloading lots of files, but if it's only an occasional thing these days, it's great to have something like this on hand to handle the gruntwork. It's for Firefox only, and <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/684/">available from here</A>. The closest Chrome equivalent that's currently available is <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bbmifjhjmficeaeniaaadblfoddfdnme?hl=en">Chrome FTP</A>, although that's considerably less polished at this point. 9. Instapaper Not an extension, but a bookmark that should work on anything – although you can get plug-ins as well. Instapaper stores any long articles you find and don't have time to read. Best of all, as it's a web service, there are viewers available for almost everything, including any web-enabled computer. Get it from <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/">www.instapaper.com</A>. 10. All-In-One-Gestures Gesture support has to be used to be fully appreciated. Opera pioneered it in web browsers, and when you're used to it, it's impossible to go back. Navigate, close windows and more with simple sweeps of the mouse and it becomes an almost subconscious act. If this specific plug-in doesn't work, there are others, although Opera still has the edge in terms of fluidity due to its built-in support. Get it <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12/">from here</A>. 11. Delicious Bookmarks Another bookmark-based extension, in both ways. Syncing bookmarks is fine, but if you're like us, you quickly end up with far too many to manage. <a href="http://www.delicious.com/">Delicious</A> is the perfect way to sort, share and tag anything of interest online. You can see what other people have said about them as well, and import them into almost any web browser or other link collection. 12. StumbleUpon On the other hand, if you're having trouble simply finding something good to read online, sit back and let <a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/">StumbleUpon</A> show you the way. Tell it what you're interested in and it finds you a page that might qualify. You can also add your own favourite sites to the collection, bookmark any of interest for later use, and comment or read comments on sites from other users. 13. AutoProxy Proxy servers are a godsend if you want to access content you're not sup… to keep your online life private. And nothing else. Because that would be Very Naughty. <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11009/">AutoProxy</A> lets you switch back and forth between identities with ease. You'll still have to track down the right proxy server for what you want to do, and you should be careful that you switch it off before doing anything crucial like online banking, just to be safe. 14. Evernote WebClipper This is the ideal way of keeping snippets of interest, images or any other clippable content from around the web. With the free Evernote package, you get 40MB a month, which is plenty for web content, and you can access it from any machine or on the major mobile platforms. An IE plug-in installs with the desktop client (not required, but very helpful for managing your note collection), with Firefox/Chrome plug-ins available separately. Get it from <a href="http://www.evernote.com/">www.evernote.com</A>. 15. FoxyTunes Don't waste time switching away from the web just because a Justin Bieber song 'accidentally' found its way into your music library. With FoxyTunes, you can control almost every major music player from within your browser – which, despite the name, can also be IE. Sorry, no Chrome. Media is one area where Firefox definitely still has the advantage, with Chrome's only real plug-ins being for online players and simple look-up checks of services like Spotify's library. Get it from <a href="http://www.foxytunes.com/">www.foxytunes.com</A>. 16. IE Tab Not many of us use IE by choice, but sometimes there's no other option. IE Tab lets you open up a window in <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10909/">Firefox</A> or <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/hehijbfgiekmjfkfjpbkbammjbdenadd?hl=en">Chrome</A>, but using the IE rendering engine instead. It gives you all the benefits, and is easily closed afterwards. <img alt="Chrome extensions" src="http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/Review%20images/PC%20Plus/PCP%20300/PCP300.feat1browser.extensions2-420-90.jpg" width="420"></IMG> 17. Session Manager Most of us need more than one website at a time. Session Manager helps you recover from crashes by bringing up complete sets of tabs. It's available now for <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2324/">Firefox</A> and the <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bbcnbpafconjjigibnhbfmmgdbbkcjfi?hl=en">Chrome</A> browser. 18. PrintPDF You can download web pages easily enough, but if you want to make sure you see them properly on another platform, PDFs are the answer. PrintPDF is a tool that exports them directly. For Firefox, <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5971/">see here</A>. Chrome users should <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bkanhckocooacphbnclgcndnpfpoppdk?hl=en">go to here</A>. 19. Karbon FLV Downloader This is a great way to download FLV video files and MP3s embedded in web page code. For FLVs, you'll need a dedicated Flash player to watch them later on, at your leisure. You can <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/54453/">download it from here</A>. 20. Bit.ly The most popular of the URLshortener tools out there, Bit.ly takes any link you give it and crunches it down into a more Twitter/instant message-friendly format. For Firefox, <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/194382/">go to here</A>. For Chrome, you need to head over to <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/fnenemkolgpgpkkbjgedagmdefkdakpm?hl=en">here</A>. 21. Remember The Milk One of the best task managers around, integrating beautifully with Gmail and available on iPhone and Android. The Firefox and Chrome plug-ins connect it with Gmail too. See <a href="http://www.rememberthemilk.com/">www.rememberthemilk.com </A>to download it. 22. Chrome Reader One of the most bizarre and annoying things we've noticed about Chrome is that Google makes it incredibly fiddly to subscribe to feeds. This simple but incredibly effective plug-in fixes that problem immediately. You can download it <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/lojpenhmoajbiciapkjkiekmobleogjc?hl=en">from here</A>. 23. Unhide Passwords Security is rather pointless when you're alone, and Unhide Passwords removes the starring-out so you can see what you're typing. It's for <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/462/">Firefox only</A>, but there's a Chrome equivalent available from <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/ikohpdigmejobealimgaomhikpoebjgb?hl=en">here</A>. 24. Copy Without Formatting When you copy text from the internet, it retains its formatting when you paste it. This add-on sits in Chrome and gives you a shortcut that only spits out plain text. Find it <a href="https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cekbgkmeapobkbadclnkjfjdbpbcaobd?hl=en">here</A>, or get the handy Firefox equivalent <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/14006/">from here</A>.

24 best browser extensions

The ability to add features to browsers makes them the most powerful applications on your screen, but with so many to choose from, where do...