Chrome: The New York Times is lowering its free article allowance from 20 articles per month to 10. Make those 10 page views more pleasant with Ochs, a Chrome extension that slims down the toolbars, brings high-res art out front, and puts the focus on the reading.More »

Chrome: If you prefer a simplified, clutter-free interface for your RSS feeds, Google Reader Readable is an extension that cuts all the clutter and displays single posts from your feed in a clean, minimal layout.More »

With each update, Facebook has gotten incrementally more cluttered, perplexing, and ornery—and I'm not even talking about all your annoying acquaintances flooding it with inane status updates. Yet, at the same time, it's become a tool few of us can live without. If Facebook has you on your last nerve, here's how to fix some of its biggest annoyances in a matter of minutes—and with only one new addition to your browser. More »

Security is one of our core values, alongside speed, stability and simplicity. From day one, we’ve designed Chrome’s extension system with security in mind. Since we launched the extension system, the state of the art in web security has advanced with technologies like Content-Security-Policy (CSP). Extension developers have been able to opt into these features, and now we’re enabling these security features by default.

Unfortunately, securing extensions with CSP by default is incompatible with the legacy extension system. We’re passionate about extension compatibility, so we’re going to make this change gradually to minimize pain for users and developers.

Users can continue to install extensions that are available in the store regardless of whether they are secured with CSP or not. This means they will not lose any of the functionality they've added to Chrome.

Developers will be able to choose when to enable the new behavior. To ease the transition, we've introduced a new manifest version attribute in the extension manifest in Chrome 18 (currently in beta). When a developer updates his or her extension to use manifest_version 2, Chrome will enforce the following CSP policy by default:

script-src 'self'; object-src 'self' 

This policy imposes the following restrictions on extensions:

1. Extensions can no longer use inline scripts, such as 
   
   . Instead, extensions must use out-of-line scripts loaded from within their package, such as 
   . 
2. Extensions can no longer use eval(). Note: If you’re using eval to parse JSON today, we suggest using JSON.parse instead. 
3. Extensions can load plug-ins, such as SWF files, only from within their package or from a whitelist of HTTPS hosts. 

A recent study from researchers at UC Berkeley suggested that these restrictions, taken together, would substantially improve the security of the extension system:

These defenses are extremely effective: adopting one of the recommended CSPs would prevent 96% (49 out of 51) of the core extension vulnerabilities we found. 

For most extensions, updating them to manifest_version 2 will require the developer to move inline scripts out-of-line and to move scripts loaded from the network into the extension package. Developers are not required to update their extensions to manifest_version 2 immediately, but, over time, more of the extension ecosystem will encourage developers to update their extensions. For example, at some point, we’ll likely start requiring new extensions uploaded to the web store to use manifest_version 2. You can find a complete list of changes and more details about CSP in the extension documentation.

It's no secret that there's big money to be made in violating your privacy. Companies will pay big bucks to learn more about you, and service providers on the web are eager to get their hands on as much information about you as possible. More »

Chrome: Text This To Me is a Chrome add-on that allows you to quickly send yourself SMS messages from your browser with links, notes, and other snippets of text with a single click. Whether you just want to send yourself a URL to open on your phone's browser, or you want to remind yourself to pick up the milk on the way home, Text This To Me gives you a quick way to do it without installing anything on your device. More »

Chrome: If you're a designer or just curious to see what fonts are used on your favorite web sites, the free Chrome extension ‘What's the font?' reveals this information easily. After installing the extension you just need to right-click the highlighted text with the font you want to identify and choose the menu option for ‘What's the font?'. More »

Chrome: Most feed readers default to a long list of headlines and articles with a folder-like navigation tree on the left to help you sift through your feeds and unread posts. It works, but FeedSquares is a Chrome extension that connects to Google Reader and uses tiles to display your feeds instead. Highlighted and off-axis tiles indicate new topics, and you can click any tile to see the posts for that feed, and any article to bring up the full text. More »

Chrome: Bookolio customizes the new tab page to make it more useful. The extension gives you instant access to all your bookmarks and sites you visit the most, as well as quick switching between all types of search engines. More »

Chrome: We've discussed the 20-20-20 Rule before, where every 20 minutes you take a 20 second break and look at an object 20 feet away to relieve eyestrain and rest your eyes. The 20 Cubed add-on for Chrome will automatically remind you to take those breaks so you don't have to set your own timer. More »

2011 was a big year for Google Chrome and all of its users. There are more Chrome users out there than ever before, and tons of great Chrome extensions to add functionality, privacy, and other services to your browser. Here are the most popular Google Chrome-related posts, extensions, and add-ons at Lifehacker during 2011. More »

Chrome: fPrivacy is a new Chrome add-on that gives you granular control over the permissions that Facebook apps request when you add them to or authorize them to access your account. For example, if you add a Facebook app and you're not too comfortable with the app's ability to post to your wall, or access your data at any time, you can deny those specific permissions while granting the other ones required for the app to function. More »

Have you ever wondered what advertising sites track your web browsing? Sheepish is an extension for Chrome that shows you exactly which companies are keeping an eye on you for every site you visit and blocks them from doing so.More »

Chrome is overtaking Firefox among power users, and for good reason. It's an incredibly powerful, extensible web browser with tons of excellent features. Today, we're covering it all—from longtime shortcuts to the latest features in one of our favorite web browsers. More »

Chrome: Sometimes you don't want to deal with bookmarking an article or site for later viewing and you just want a simple nudge to look at it again later. Page Snooze does just that, letting you "snooze" a tab for up to two weeks.More »

Chrome: Now that more of you are using Chrome than ever before, it's also likely you're using more Chrome extensions than ever before. Disable All Extensions, as the name implies, gives you one button to enable or disable all of your Chrome extensions quickly without restarting the browser, or select individual ones to toggle or uninstall whenever you choose. More »

Many Google Chrome extensions add a button to the browser’s address toolbar. If you have installed more than a dozen or so extensions, you may notice that space can become a issue, especially if the majority of extensions has added a button to the address bar. While you can hide individual extension icons with a right-click and the selection of Hide Button from the menu, it is usually not something that you may want to do considering that you may use buttons eventually again.

You could also disable and enable extensions to hide and show their buttons, but that is also not overly comfortable.

The Google Chrome Extensions Manager provides a solution for this problem. It basically adds two-click options to the browser to manage extensions, apps and themes comfortable.

A click on the extension’s button displays all installed extensions, applications and themes. Each entry is listed with its name, version and description plus buttons to open the homepage, uninstall or open the options page. The checkbox finally is used to quickly enable or disable the extension, theme or app in the browser. Links at the top lead to specific sections, for instance to display all disabled or outdated add-ons, or to display all extensions, apps and themes regardless of their status in one list.

The core feature that the Extensions Manager provides is the ability to quickly enable or disable extensions, applications or themes in the browser. It takes two clicks, one on the extension icon and the second in the checkbox to enable or disable select extensions.

That’s more comfortable than using Chrome’s built-in extension manager or the right-click context menu to do the same (at least for re-enabling them after disabling).

Themes can also be switched with two clicks once the Chrome Extensions Manager add-on has been installed.

The extension furthermore allows you to keep track of updates which are displayed in the recent tab, and of outdated extensions which are displayed in the outdated tab.

The options of Extensions Manager offer additional customizations. Here it is for instance possible to start the display in a specific view mode, change the types of entries that appear under recent, or disable notifications when extensions are enabled or disabled.

Especially users with lots of installed themes, extensions or apps in the Chrome browser can benefit from Extensions Manager as it makes it easier to deal with installed browser add-ons.

Chrome users can download the extension from the official Chrome Web Store.

Firefox/Chrome/Safari: News aggregation service News360's (@news360app) new browser extension, Periscope, offers up likeminded stories related to the news articles you're reading to the top of your screen.More »

Articles on the web can get a little long sometimes, and it can be difficult to skim them and find the parts that are most relevant to you. That's where Scrollbar of Contents comes in. It's a free add-on for Chrome that adds clickable buttons next to your scrollbar so you can jump right to different sections of the article you're reading. More »