SmartSurf: Improve your browsing experience!
A productivity and utility focused browser extension
Most jobs require people to spend hours browsing on the internet to look for information, resources or communication. Being productive for extended hours is difficult, as most of the tasks are mundane and repetitive. Browser extensions, applications that are designed as add-ons for the browser, are aimed at improving the general browsing experience.
However, with so many specialized single-purpose extensions, potential users are often at a loss to determine which extension suits their needs. There are just too many to choose from. Many users are simply unaware of the possibilities.
To tackle both the issues, I decided to create a multipurpose extension — it helps users boost their productivity.
I have been working on the extension, christened ‘SmartSurf’, along with my teammate Chinmay Srivastava, since August as part of our course project. We intend to complete it by the end of November. We have tried to include as many useful features as we could in the given time frame. Some of the features that we have included are:
Smart Tab:
This feature replaces the outdated new tab with lots of new components.
- The user is greeted with a fresh wallpaper and quote every time a new tab is opened. The user can also use the new search bar for a better experience. The current date and time are displayed below it.
- The panel in the middle displays the latest international news using an API powered by the NY Times. It is displayed in a carousel so you can go through all of the top stories. Clicking on it opens the news item in a new tab for you to read.
- The panel on the left displays the current weather conditions around the user’s location. The data is very accurate and is fetched using an API created by OpenWeatherMap.
4. The panel on the right acts like a menu. You can click on the tile on the top left to access the Game Center, where you can play games like Breakout, Snake, and Tetris.
5. The tile at the top-right redirects to the extension’s website, where you can read about the features available along with their tutorials. Users can also share their suggestions and feedback through the website.
6. The tile at the bottom-left leads to a whiteboard. You can choose the brush’s color and thickness. An eraser, fill tool, undo, redo, and reset button have been included as well.
7. The tile present at the bottom-right corner opens a timer based on the Pomodoro technique. You can set the duration of your working period to any multiple of five minutes using the buttons available. You can also pause and reset the timer. The rest duration is, by default, a fifth of the working period.
Password Generator:
This feature creates a random password based on your requirements and saves them to your clipboard. You can directly paste it into the password field.
Task Monitor:
This feature is a combination of the todo list and reminder. Add tasks on the go, with or without deadlines, as you wish. If you add tasks with a due date and time, a pop up will alert you at the specified time and an alarm tone plays.
Dictionary:
Search for words using this feature without having to open a new tab to run a google search. Along with all the definitions, pronunciation, and phonetics are also available. Users can click on the speaker icon to hear the pronunciation. The results are fetched using Google API, so users can expect a high level of accuracy in the results.
Text Scraper:
Use this feature to scrape text from images. Once the image containing the text has been uploaded, the character recognition process is carried out using Tesseract.js, an OCR library.
Advertisement blocker:
This feature blocks advertisements on all websites. You can whitelist websites so that the adblocker does not work on the specified websites. It blocks banners, pop-ups, and all other display advertisements.
These are all the features that we have completed and are ready to be published to the Chrome Webstore. We intend to keep adding useful features and refining the existing ones over time.
