Computers are extensions of our brains. They don’t just store our funny image folders, but also our notes, our to-do lists, our reminders. There are all sorts of things that were once human brain functions that have been externalized through literacy, scratch paper, and now personal computers. One consequence is that you can give yourself a serious personal upgrade with organizational tools to match your computer usage.
I’ve been accumulating (and cyclically purging) browser extensions since I was little. Here are some that are useful to me today.
Browser Extensions
I’m working on Chrome at the moment; these tools should all have analogues on Firefox and Opera as well.
The Great Suspender
It’s 2020, we all have fifty tabs open. And since becoming a software guy, my count has risen to new, ridiculous heights. One thing makes it possible for the computer to keep chugging along under these conditions: The Great Suspender. The default behavior of this extension is that it “suspends” webpages you have open but haven’t looked at in a while — turning them basically into unloaded URLs rather than running webpages. It lets you use your tabs like a bookmark manager, but without having to actually deal with bookmarking and retrieving things in a separate interface. This functionality is completely essential to both my working and non-working internet usage.
React Dev Tools
There are all kinds of dev tools extensions, this is just the one I’m using for React. You should search for whatever dev tools are relevant to what you’re doing.
The React Dev Tools add two tabs to your Chrome Dev Tools. With it, whenever you’re on a page built in React, you can inspect the component hierarchy. You can also look at performance metrics for your own React apps.
Block Site
Before I used a site blocker, I looked down on people that did. Just have some self control & own your actions and behaviors, I thought.
Then I started using one, and became much more productive. Or, to phrase that more humanistically, I became much more aware, present and focused.
You can use it a few different ways, but basically if you want to make sure you’re not gonna accidentally take an hour-long detour on facebook or reddit or whatever, you should use a site blocker. It’s a parental control for yourself. It was actually completely eye-opening when I started using it — many times a day, I’d reflexively try to navigate to a time-wasting website because my brain wanted to turn off. I’d see the Site Blocker wagging its finger at me and realize that I would have lost my workday without it.
EditThisCookie
EditThisCookie is great for anyone working with, learning about, or afraid of cookies. It does what it says on the tin — provides text entry fields for you to edit all the cookies being used by the page you’re on. Even outside of development uses, it’s great for seeing how a page is tracking you.
JSON Formatter
This makes JSON pretty and readable whenever you’re displaying it in the browser. You absolutely need something like this if you’re working with JSON.
Typio Form Recovery
I don’t know if Typio is the best at what it does, I just picked it randomly the last time I realized I needed a form recovery extension. All it does is save the things you write in input fields, so you don’t lose them if you lose the page for some reason. Huge time- and frustration-saver. You could also look for one that auto-populates fields with the last thing you entered in them, for further savings on both fronts.
WhatRuns
This is the newest addition for me and I love it. I’m constantly thinking, “I wonder what they built this with”, and now I know! It’s the best.
Those five entries you see in the picture above each link both to the technology’s own website, and WhatRuns’ own little encyclopedia about them, with client lists. Amazing.
Spaces
Spaces is an extension for managing a lot of tabs, like The Great Suspender. What this one provides is a way to name your different Chrome tabs, and view and navigate between them from this central window. This is another recent gamechanger for me. If you ever make different windows to handle different sets of tabs, or want to do so but are afraid of the mess, this is for you.
Honorable Mention
It’s not necessarily an “organization tool”, and maybe I shouldn’t be saying this as someone trying to be hired in software development, but you should use an adblocker. “ublock origin” and “ublock origin extra” are, as far as I know, the latest and greatest for this purpose — so much so that the original “ublock” has been maliciously acquired and compromised by advertisers. Another consideration is AdNauseum, which also sends phantom clicks to all those ads, just to mess with them.
Image omitted to reduce how mad Medium will be at me for suggesting this.
Similarly non-organizational: “HTTPS Everywhere” will force secure connections on all sites, which is just good internet hygiene. Made by our friends at the EFF.
Irrelevant Extensions for Completeness Sake
These are not suggestions at all, but just so you know everything about me, I also use Netflix Party to watch movies in quarantine, and Autocard Anywhere to see magic cards anywhere.
