The Internet is a wild land and its expansion has brought us a lot of useful resources, but often presented in a not quite perfect way from the point of view of usability.
The main problems that occur, sometimes, even with the best designed sites, are related to the huge amount of irrelevant content, popups or banners to be accepted and also to the graphic layout which if for the majority it can be good, cannot be for everyone.
Thanks to Google Chrome and its ability to customize almost everything thanks to the extensions, you can improve or change the usability of your favorite sites on your PC, to find alternative ways to browse and read them more quickly and satisfactorily.
1) Popup blocker
To avoid the appearance of advertising pop-ups that block browsing, modern browsers such as Chrome have an internal functionality to be activated that can prevent it. In addition, there is also an extension, Pupup Blocker, which reinforces this protection by preventing any floating window from appearing on a site when you click on it. We talked about how to configure the browser and extensions in a specific article on how to block pop-ups and automatic redirects on Chrome and Firefox.
2) Hide Banner Cookies
I don't care about cookies is an extension to hide the annoying banner where you have to accept site cookies, often useless.
3) Search in history
While in Chrome it is possible to search the history to find sites seen in the past, there are some extensions to improve the search in the history and make it faster, more comfortable to see and easier to search.
4) Change the usability of Amazon
The Amazon Lite extension for Chrome eliminates any unnecessary elements from the Amazon website showing a clean and minimal design. So things like recommendations, advertisements, offer banners and other things disappear. Amazon Lite makes the home page of the site with a search bar at the top and the essential links to quickly switch to orders, cart etc. There is also an option to switch to the original Amazon website and enable or disable the extension on demand.
In addition to this, extensions are also very useful for controlling the price evolution of the products we have talked about in the past.
5) Change the usability of Booking
With the ShutUpBookingCom extension (no longer exists) the Booking website is changed by removing the alerts that try to push to the reservation, such as the one that says that few rooms are missing forcing us to make a hasty decision.
6) Change the usability of Facebook
Social Fixer improves Facebook by eliminating all the hassles of the social network, including sponsored posts, recommended posts. This extension also allows you to decide what to see on Facebook, to hide things that do not interest us, to reorder the news and find first the posts with which you interacted and much more. Social Fixer has many options to filter everything we don't like and a stealth mode through which to remove likes and comments.
7) Improve YouTube
The Improve YouTube extension offers the ability to customize each part of the YouTube desktop website, move blocks, delete them or change their size. In addition, Improve YouTube unlocks many hidden features like a pop-up player, playlist control, options to hide previews, restore the previous YouTube design and configure custom shortcuts.
For Youtube we can also install Magic Actions to play Youtube videos as one would do with a MediaPlayer program, without comments and without other useless elements. It also plays every video in maximum resolution, removes ads from Youtube, allows you to control the volume with the mouse wheel and adds a cinema mode to watch videos without distraction.
8) Improve Wikipedia
WikiWand improves Wikipedia on Chrome by completely changing its graphics, making it more modern, beautiful to look at and easy to navigate through internal links and indexes.
9) Change Twitter
With the Fix Twitter extension you can activate small functions absent in Twitter such as the t.co links replaced with the original links and an indication of who replies to whom.
10) Improvements to the Instagram site
The small Improved Layout for Instagram.com extension fills the meager Instagram site by transforming it into a grid that uses the entire space available on the screen and allows you to view multiple posts together. In addition, the sidebar of stories and tips moves into a sliding pane that can be hidden when needed. The extension also has other options including the dark theme, the ability to set the number of rows and columns of the grid and the photo-only mode. Additional video controls are also available to go back, forward them, download the file, and change the volume.
In another article, other extensions to use Instagram on Chrome and Firefox.
11) Improve Netflix on PC
With Super Netflix you can block the automatic display of previews on the home page, blur the descriptions to avoid potential spoilers and automatically skip the introductions. In addition, Super Netflix adds small additional tools such as the ability to upload its subtitles and different ways to change the video quality such as brightness, contrast and color.
In another article you can find other Chrome extensions for Netflix.
Other extensions to improve the usability of the web in Chrome have been reported in other articles such as:
- Most useful Google Chrome extensions to add to the browser
- Extensions to improve productivity in Google Chrome
The main problems that occur, sometimes, even with the best designed sites, are related to the huge amount of irrelevant content, popups or banners to be accepted and also to the graphic layout which if for the majority it can be good, cannot be for everyone.
Thanks to Google Chrome and its ability to customize almost everything thanks to the extensions, you can improve or change the usability of your favorite sites on your PC, to find alternative ways to browse and read them more quickly and satisfactorily.
1) Popup blocker
To avoid the appearance of advertising pop-ups that block browsing, modern browsers such as Chrome have an internal functionality to be activated that can prevent it. In addition, there is also an extension, Pupup Blocker, which reinforces this protection by preventing any floating window from appearing on a site when you click on it. We talked about how to configure the browser and extensions in a specific article on how to block pop-ups and automatic redirects on Chrome and Firefox.
2) Hide Banner Cookies
I don't care about cookies is an extension to hide the annoying banner where you have to accept site cookies, often useless.
3) Search in history
While in Chrome it is possible to search the history to find sites seen in the past, there are some extensions to improve the search in the history and make it faster, more comfortable to see and easier to search.
4) Change the usability of Amazon
The Amazon Lite extension for Chrome eliminates any unnecessary elements from the Amazon website showing a clean and minimal design. So things like recommendations, advertisements, offer banners and other things disappear. Amazon Lite makes the home page of the site with a search bar at the top and the essential links to quickly switch to orders, cart etc. There is also an option to switch to the original Amazon website and enable or disable the extension on demand.
In addition to this, extensions are also very useful for controlling the price evolution of the products we have talked about in the past.
5) Change the usability of Booking
With the ShutUpBookingCom extension (no longer exists) the Booking website is changed by removing the alerts that try to push to the reservation, such as the one that says that few rooms are missing forcing us to make a hasty decision.
6) Change the usability of Facebook
Social Fixer improves Facebook by eliminating all the hassles of the social network, including sponsored posts, recommended posts. This extension also allows you to decide what to see on Facebook, to hide things that do not interest us, to reorder the news and find first the posts with which you interacted and much more. Social Fixer has many options to filter everything we don't like and a stealth mode through which to remove likes and comments.
7) Improve YouTube
The Improve YouTube extension offers the ability to customize each part of the YouTube desktop website, move blocks, delete them or change their size. In addition, Improve YouTube unlocks many hidden features like a pop-up player, playlist control, options to hide previews, restore the previous YouTube design and configure custom shortcuts.
For Youtube we can also install Magic Actions to play Youtube videos as one would do with a MediaPlayer program, without comments and without other useless elements. It also plays every video in maximum resolution, removes ads from Youtube, allows you to control the volume with the mouse wheel and adds a cinema mode to watch videos without distraction.
8) Improve Wikipedia
WikiWand improves Wikipedia on Chrome by completely changing its graphics, making it more modern, beautiful to look at and easy to navigate through internal links and indexes.
9) Change Twitter
With the Fix Twitter extension you can activate small functions absent in Twitter such as the t.co links replaced with the original links and an indication of who replies to whom.
10) Improvements to the Instagram site
The small Improved Layout for Instagram.com extension fills the meager Instagram site by transforming it into a grid that uses the entire space available on the screen and allows you to view multiple posts together. In addition, the sidebar of stories and tips moves into a sliding pane that can be hidden when needed. The extension also has other options including the dark theme, the ability to set the number of rows and columns of the grid and the photo-only mode. Additional video controls are also available to go back, forward them, download the file, and change the volume.
In another article, other extensions to use Instagram on Chrome and Firefox.
11) Improve Netflix on PC
With Super Netflix you can block the automatic display of previews on the home page, blur the descriptions to avoid potential spoilers and automatically skip the introductions. In addition, Super Netflix adds small additional tools such as the ability to upload its subtitles and different ways to change the video quality such as brightness, contrast and color.
In another article you can find other Chrome extensions for Netflix.
Other extensions to improve the usability of the web in Chrome have been reported in other articles such as:
- Most useful Google Chrome extensions to add to the browser
- Extensions to improve productivity in Google Chrome
