Really? As far as I can tell extensions like Evernote (3.2m users), Pocket (1.5m) and Buffer (250k) are heavily used, well understood, and loved by many average consumers.

You could make the argument that the variety of use cases is limited: all of the above are fairly simple "click a button to save somewhere" apps, and they don't do too much fancy integration beyond laying an iframe with their save dialog onto the page.

Our own academic-focused extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/paperpile-extensio...) is a bit more niche, but does some cool stuff: we use the background page to parse metadata from PDFs, content scripts to insert buttons into academic search results (Buffer does something similar for Twitter), and it plugs into Google Docs to provide an extra layer of UI.

But alas, the most useful thing our extension does is similar to Evernote/Pocket/Buffer: save a piece of content (in this case journal articles) for later.

I think the problem with doing cool extension stuff is that it's often really hard to get just right: you need to tread carefully when working on a system that could interfere with your user's most basic browsing experience!

Those are good examples, for sure, and that research manager looks cool!

I don't think it's quite that bad in Firefox. My Firefox really is my unique Firefox, and it isn't my Firefox until I get my extensions installed. My limited impression is that extensions are part of the appeal of Firefox.

Don't leave us hanging, what do you have in mind?

Tell me if this exists...Imagine a developer tools "commit" interface, where you could make changes in the DOM or to CSS and then save them from the browser.

Right now if I adjust a bunch of different elements, I have to remember each one and copy them by hand.

I think this exists in the standard Dev Tools / inspector.

Edit a CSS file in the Sources tab of the Dev Tools then right click and click Local Modifications. Also right click on the file (in the whitespace) and click Save. Then click History and you can see the exact changes that you made and even revert.

I've never used it though, not sure how useful it is.

There is also a Workspace feature in the Dev Tools options which might have something closer to what you are looking for.

It's built into developer tools already bro. Google it.

The browser extension market had its golden age from Firefox 1.0 to Firefox 4.0, roughly.

Now the feature set for a browser pretty much settled down, web apps are able to do powerful things on their own, and mobile apps stole the market of the "small app that does one specific thing good".

Dev tools, password manager, chrome-to-phone, adblock, edit-this-cookie are all I've ever needed, and many of those I use with another Chrome profile (wonderful new feature if you haven't used it yet).

Do you really want things like an FTP, file manager, text editor, or other extensions installed? They could easily introduce security vulnerabilities and will slow down your browsing experience (something that you want to be fast).

I leave about 500 tabs open so more extensions are not something that I want to have locking up my browser.

Many browser extensions ask for permissions such as viewing all web history, no thanks...

I don't understand why anyone would have that many tabs open. It's the internet, man — bookmark it and go back if you need to.

Haha, you should see my bookmarks... no less than 10,000 right now (probably more) and I export and clean them every 6 months. The thing is they are all quality sites or pages and interesting information that I would like to read or will need sometime soon. I've tried all of the major bookmarking sites and have even planned on rolling my own a couple of times (didn't have enough time to build it out though).

500 tabs is probably an exaggeration, but unless I recently restarted my computer or Chrome so it will update I always have over 100 open.

Does anyone know of an open-source bookmark manager that can be self-hosted? The bookmarklet is easy to create and archiving a copy of the site would be a really nice feature (but not required). There are also several scripts to pull out summaries or body text from pages, but those could always be processed later.

I'd recommend just adding them to an email to yourself or a textfile. Its low tech but more durable than most methods.

Yeah, that's a good idea.

I'd like to eventually import all the bookmarks into some kind of bookmark manager once I figure out the best way to handle it. The XML files that Chrome creates when you export them are a very nice storage format for processing later.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. ;)

I used chrome-to-phone, but now I use pushbullet and I love it.