Over the years I’ve gotten used to browser extensions and have a few I consider part of my typical browser install. Without them I feel less productive and the experience of browsing the web is not complete. The extensions I use are for ad-blocking, password management and on-the-fly image manipulation like hover-zoom. I also use one for session management and one for URL shortening. There’s been others also but I am now down to a set of five extensions I use all the time.
I’ve been asking myself why do I need these extensions? The answer is simple: The browsers available lacks important features and more and more so after the extensions concept got widely adapted. The browser vendors creates a slim feature poor browser and rely on the user to fill in the blanks with extensions. There are problems related to this:
— Poorly written extensions causing instability and crashes.
— Extensions interfering with each other or with the browser itself slowing it down.
— Extensions compromising security of the browser.
Lately the security aspect of extensions have reached the news since there’s been stories of people getting accounts on services like LinkedIn compromised by malicious extensions. This has made me rethink how I would like my web browser to be developed and work. I would like to see the browser return to when it’s design goal was to offer all the features you need for secure and convenient web access. An advanced password manager is obvious, and there are other features that I would like to see back in a web browser where it once belonged. I remember back in the day when my browser had all I need. It was fast, finely tuned to my liking and secure. There are many browsers to choose from these days but the full featured super-fast and feature-rich web browser is no longer there. I am hoping that will change at some point.
