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by PaulHoule 373 days ago
Personally a browser extension is the last kind of software I want to install.

Circa 2000 all of my "normie" relatives had 20 or 30 different "toolbars" installed in their browsers from the likes of Yahoo, Lycos, Hotmail, Infoseek, Altavista, etc. They had horrible 640x480 screens that were effectively 640x120 but they thought it was normal, didn't have a choice, etc.

When you install plugins into GUI applications they eventually die of "pluginitis" as something adds 0.2s of latency here and something else adds 0.3s and... wow, a race condition!

The cases I will install an extension are: (1) it is required for work, a project, whatever or (2) I expect it to improve, not reduce performance, such as an adblocker or anti-tracking tool.

It might seem like an anachronism, but I still make bookmarklets that do pretty fancy things such as to cue a personal webcrawler.

2 comments

Even the 1Password extension which I absolutely rely on injects huge JS into every site; screws up lighthouse scores and leaves me ill-at-ease. Extensions are an incredible attack vector.
Personally I think extensions like 1Password are the worst. I've had talks w/ so many people at work who want me to install them, I tell them about the awful things that are going to happen with these vendors, then they come true.
You're right, browser extensions are indeed not as convenient as direct web pages or apps, but sometimes certain browser extensions can really improve efficiency.