.png){kind=icon}
In Quality Assurance testing, efficiency is key. There are many useful tools, like Chrome extensions, to accelerate some of the manual steps testers have to take while testing a web application. For web applications, testing is often done on Google Chrome (the most popular web browser of 2020). Luckily, there are many Chrome extensions that can help make web testing more efficient and accurate. That’s why we created a 2020 list of THE best chrome extensions and add-ons for testers.
WINDOW RESIZER
Testing across different screens and different resolutions is an important step in the testing process. That’s why Windows Resizer allows you to do this directly through the Chrome web browser. You can set the window’s width/height, position, preset icon (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop) and even have the option to apply the new dimensions to the entire window or the viewport.
CHECK MY LINKS
Bad links are unpleasant for users browsing a website and can negatively impact search-ability for search engines. Check My Links quickly finds all the links on a web page and checks if each link is valid. It highlights which links work and which ones are broken so that you can easily identify the links that need to be fixed. Fast and efficient, this plugin will help get the job done and save you the time it would take to test each link manually.
GHOSTERY
The majority of websites track users’ online activities and may store personal data, which can interfere with testing. Ghostery helps protect your privacy and allows you to make your own decisions regarding how much personal data you share while visiting a website.
WAVE EVALUATION TOOL
Here at PLUS QA, accessibility is important to us. WAVE is a web accessibility evaluation tool that provides visual feedback about the accessibility of your web content by injecting icons and indicators into your page. WAVE can identify many Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates your evaluation of web content. If you are interested in learning more about accessibility please visit our blog.
Download Wave Evaluation Tool
LOREM IPSUM GENERATOR
When testing certain web applications, you may need to write blocks of text. Lorem Ipsum Generator provides an elegant and quick way to create default text or generate Lorem Ipsum. It’s optimized for quick usage, but it can be customized for more specific needs which makes it one of the best chrome extensions.
Download Lorem Ipsum Generator
EDIT THIS COOKIE
Editing or deleting cookies can be useful for web application testing. Cookies can be used for experiments on websites, as well as for tracking. Being able to change the cookie to get into a different experiment allows testers to examine more aspects of a web page. EditThisCookie is a great cookie manager, as you can add, delete, edit, search, protect, and block cookies.
FULL PAGE SCREEN CAPTURE
Capturing screenshots is vital for testing, to provide documentation of any bugs you encounter. There are many extensions and built-in tools to help with this, but most don’t capture the full page. Full Page Screen Capture allows you to capture a screenshot of your current page in entirety and reliably—without requesting any extra permissions. It’s as easy as clicking on the extension icon (or pressing Alt+Shift+P), to create an image or PDF of the full page.
Download Full Page Screen Capture
SITEIMPROVE ACCESSIBILITY CHECKER
There are multiple add-ons for Accessibility testing and Siteimprove Accessibility Checker is a great tool to evaluate any web page for accessibility issues at any given time. It provides intuitive, visual feedback about your content by highlighting detected issues right on the page making one of the best chrome extensions for Accessibility.
Download Siteimprove Accessibility Checker
BUG MAGNET
QA testers can speed up their testing process with certain tools, like this exploratory testing assistant for Chrome. Bug Magnet adds common problematic values and edge cases to the context menu (right-click) for editable elements, so you can keep them handy and access them easily during exploratory testing sessions.
CLICK&CLEAN
Clearing cookies, browsers cache, and history can be time-consuming, especially when you test the same page multiple times in a row. With Click&Clean, you can easily erase all the information stored and customize different options while testing.
All the Chrome extensions listed in this post are free and useful for testers. If you ever decide you want to remove any extensions from Chrome, just type in chrome://extensions/ to manage your extensions.
We hope you will find new plugins that will help you get you through testing more efficiently for your next project.