Wayne Lewis from GeeksTech.co.uk writes:

Hi, Chris!

I’ve been a Firefox user now for some years and I’ve been very happy with it. However, I’ve also been dabbling in Google Chrome and I know a lot of people who have started using it in place of Internet Explorer, and even some who choose it over their once-beloved Firefox — though this latter group is somewhat rare.

One reason so many Firefox users are not moving to Google Chrome is that Firefox has a army of extensions and plug-ins that many users have found difficult to do without. Even IE has toolbars and other utilities that can be added on, but not as many as Firefox.

However, Chrome is catching up, and there are now some very good Chrome extensions and plug-ins. Here are some that I recommend (in no particular order).

1. Turn Off the Lights: This enables the background of an entire page to fade to dark so that you can watch a video (from YouTube, for example) as if you are in the cinema. With one click on the lamp button, the page will go dark. Click again, and it returns back as normal.
2. WOT: WOT stands for Web of Trust — a service that provides feedback on Web sites before you visit them. It can flag those that deliver malware or spam, and it also lists shopping sites that are known to cheat customers. It provides age-related ratings for site content, as well. Other users rate the sites they visit and this information is appended to the search results you receive from any major search engine.
3. Split Screen: This opens a new tab and prompts the user for two URLs, then displays both sites on one page. It’s great for cross-reference studying and surfing the Web in general! Watch a video (or wait for it to buffer) while you surf another Web page.
4. Currency Converter: This extension adds a new button to your browser toolbar. Click the button to open a popup where you can convert 162 different currencies.
5. AddThis: Share to Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Posterous, Instapaper, and 200 more sites. AddThis translate pages and autoconfigures based on usage.
6. Google Mail Checker Plus: Displays the number of unread messages in your Gmail and Google Apps inbox. Preview mail, read, delete, archive, and mark as spam!
7. Auto HD for YouTube: Start playing all YouTube videos in HD by default (if it is posible).
8. Xmarks Bookmarks Sync: Back up and sync your bookmarks across computers and browsers. Xmarks is also available for Firefox, Safari, and IE.
9. SEO Site Tools: If you have your own Web site and you want to monitor its traffic, this will give you on-page and external metrics, social media info, your site’s number rating on Yahoo!, Bing, and Google SERPs. It extends WMT, YSE, and GA with metrics.
10. Google Translate: This extension translates entire Web pages into a language of your choice with one click.

Thanks, and I hope this helps even the most hardcore Firefox users to at least give Google Chrome a try! Feel free to follow us on:

geekstech.co.uk
Twitter
Yahoo!
YouTube