Google Chrome is one of the most popular browsers in the world. According to the Statista for 2021, 3.2 billion people use it as their primary browser. Chrome is particularly popular among developers and testers.

The Google Chrome Extension Web Store has more than 137.3 thousand extensions. IT specialists at Join.To.IT, a company specializing in the provision of full package of services for iOS, Android and web development, have compiled a list of Top 13 Chrome Extensions that will be useful for testers. They simplify everyday tasks and enhance performance.

1. Window Resizer

With this extension, you can resize the browser window to simulate various screen resolutions. This is especially useful for developers and QA experts as it helps them test the product in different browser sizes and resolutions. You can set the window width or height, window position, icon (phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop), and apply the new dimensions to the entire window or just the viewport.

How to resize a page using the Window Resizer extension

2. Awesome Screenshot and Screen Recorder

It is an extension for creating screenshots and screencasts, which allows ‘shooting’ the entire page, only the visible or selected part thereof, and recording the browser window on video. You may change the ready-made files in the editor: add captions, select the desired text with highlighters, and cut the necessary elements. The recorded videos can be saved as a GIF file. Files are uploaded to the Google Cloud; this will require your account.

The extension has more than 3 million users worldwide. In addition to the Chrome Extension, there is also the Awesome Screenshot web application, which allows editing not only captured screenshots but also any uploaded image.

Awesome Screenshot and Screen Recorder Extension

3. Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder

There is a note-taking app – Nimbus Note, which is not inferior to giants like Evernote or OneNote. The Nimbus Screenshot Extension has been developed for it. It does not require the basic client to be installed and can run standalone without logging into a Nimbus account.

After you have captured the visible part, the selected area of the page, or the entire page, you can add captions, highlight/select the text, or draw a shape on the image or video.

Nimbus Screenshot has a Pro version that allows uploading ready-made screenshots and videos to Google Drive, Dropbox, and Slack accounts.

An example of the Nimbus Screenshot & Screen Video Recorder Extension

4. PerfectPixel

When testing the UI — the look and feel of web application — it is important to check every pixel. In addition, many customers, when ordering a layout or a site, indicate in the terms of reference that the layout should be pixel-perfect. This means that it must match to the finest details to what is drawn on the site design mockup in Photoshop (PSD mockup).

The PerfectPixel Extension allows you to make sure that all pixels are in place. Using it, you can superimpose a semi-transparent image on top of HTML page and do a pixel analysis.

The extension is distinct in a convenient and user-friendly interface, high functionality, easy connect and comfort settings that allow you to test the product faster and more efficiently.

An example of image superimposition on the top of page

5. Lorem Ipsum Generator

When developing a web page, it is filled with specially generated Lorem Ipsum text. This is a so called dummy text. Lorem Ipsum generators are effective for testers and web designers to use. For instance, QA experts use the extension for the Lorem Ipsum Generator browser when they need to quickly fill in fields for the form testing.

In addition, such dummy text saves time for web designers (they do not have to wait for ready-made content to appear) and allows the customer to focus on evaluating the product design. Moreover, the customer cannot always immediately provide the designer with already prepared advertising slogans, texts describing the product contents or a set of articles for the site under development. In this case, the Lorem Ipsum generator helps significantly.

With this extension, you can also adjust the text size for the dummy text. You just need to copy the finished placeholder from the online generator page and paste it on the site.

Lorem Ipsum Generator for Google Chrome

6. FakeFiller

The Chrome Extension that helps fill the input data on a page with fake information. The form developers and testers are actively using it as it obviates the need to manually enter the values into fields. All data are filled with randomly generated names, e-mails, phone numbers, etc. What the plugin can do:

With one button, all fields are filled in at once — either 7, 25 or 110.
Each time the extension fills in the fields with different values. So you can easily create 10 different users, product cards, etc.
Supports the maxLength property.
Randomly fills in the dropdowns, checkboxes, and radio buttons.
Ignores CAPTCHA, hidden, disabled or read-only fields.

Important: the extension has a drawback — it does not always fill the fields correctly, it depends on the HTML code (field type, rules). Therefore, there may be errors that need to be corrected manually.

An example of filling in the fields with the FakeFiller Extension

7. LightShot

It is a user-friendly and easy-to-use Google Chrome Extension for screenshots. The LightShot allows creating screenshots in a variety of ways. It is able to ‘capture’ fragments of pages and not the entire tab. To do this, you need to click the button on the toolbar, select the desired area, highlight/select the text, draw shape or add caption, and then save the screenshot to disk, Prntscr.com cloud or print out.

The screenshot can be instantly edited in the user-friendly editor. An incredibly perfect feature of the LightShot is an image search in Google. This is useful if an image cannot be right-clicked and searched using the standard Chrome method.

8. WhatFont

The WhatFont makes it easy and quick to find the fonts you need on a page. To use it, you need to install the extension, point to the desired word and the tool will show you which font is used on the page with all the details: name, family, style, size, color, etc. The extension also defines the services used to serve web fonts. It supports Typekit and Google Font API.

How the WhatFont Extension runs

9. Exploratory Testing Chrome Extension

It can be difficult to take notes when testing, especially if you have to toggle between multiple windows. Sometimes, you need to create a screenshot and link it with an explanatory text. In such cases, you can use the Exploratory Testing Chrome Extension. In ECTE, you can add all the information on bugs directly in the browser window.

ECTE has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to add notes and divide them into bugs, ideas, etc. After testing, you can create a detailed report in the browser or download it to a CSV file.

Key expansion options:

Error, idea, notes, and questions messages.
Creating screenshots during the session.
Viewing session results in a report.
Saving and importing a session.
Exporting session to JSON, CSV or HTML.

Exploratory Testing Chrome Extension

10. WAVE Evaluation Tool

Online services play a key role in brand communication with the audience. However, programs or sites are predominantly sight-based, while people with visual impairment cannot easily read a post or see clearly all the buttons on the checkout. According to WHO report for 2021, at least 2.2 billion people in the world, or more than 20% of the population, suffer from farsightedness or nearsightedness. Visual impairments can also be related to color blindness or the way the brain processes images (e.g., dyslexia).

5% of the world population suffers from hearing impairment. Therefore, such users will not perceive audio content if you do not integrate text into the video.

The WAVE Evaluation Tool is a useful accessibility evaluation tool that tests a site for WCAG compliance (for people with disabilities). Here are some examples of these principles:

Provide text alternatives for any audio and visual content.
Do not make emphasis on color scheme.
Deploy the user’s native language.
Provide clear navigation mechanisms.

By adding icons and indicators to the web page, the extension makes it easier to evaluate and report accessibility issues. The analysis is made in the Chrome browser, which allows to safely evaluating internal, local, password-protected and other sensitive web pages. To run a WAVE report, click on the WAVE icon to the right of the browser address bar or select WAVE this page from the context menu.

An example of using the WAVE Evaluation Tool

11. Yet Another REST Client

YARC (Yet Another REST Client) is an easy-to-use Chrome REST console that allows testing various API. With this extension, you can easily save your files and then import or export them to new devices. They are automatically synchronized with the user’s Google account. The extension saves a search history so you can use them for quick comparison or rerun.

Yet Another REST Client Extension

12. D3coder

It is a useful Chrome Extension for security testing. It can encode and decode text (ase64, CRC32 hashing, rot13) selected via context menu from browser. You have to copy the text to the clipboard and select Convert from the menu. After conversion, d3coder will copy the text of the clipboard. The extension allows converting text to various formats, such as base64, CRC32, rot13, CRC32, and UNIX time.

An example of using the D3coder Chrome Extension

13. EditThisCookie

Working with cookies can be confusing — it often happens that cookies are available on the site when you can do without them, and are not available when they are really needed on the page. Managing cookies through the browser console is not very convenient. Instead, you can use the EditThisCookie Extension, which shows a set of cookies that you can change, add, remove or block

Key features of the Chrome Extension:

Editing cookies.
Deleting cookies.
Adding new cookies.
Creating cookies.
Searching cookies.
Protecting cookies (read only).
Blocking cookies (filter).
Exporting cookies to JSON, Netscape (ideal for wget and curl), Perl::LPW.
Importing cookies in JSON format.
Limiting the maximum duration of any cookies.
Improving performance, removing outdated cookies.
Importing cookies.txt.

The EditThisCookie is the best utility in its niche, thus a large number of extensions with similar functionality have appeared on the Internet.

What the EditThisCookie plugin looks like

Wrap-up: Summary

None of these extensions will replace manual testing, but each will help make QA work easier. All of them will vastly save time on routine tasks and allow focusing on the most important things during testing.

Chrome developers release new extensions every week. Do you know any useful Chrome Extensions that are not listed? Share them on social media by tagging @jointoit.

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