Many people use the browser several times a day, sometimes spending hours in it. The browser has become a very important and integral part of our productivity system. It is our window to the online world.

In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee wrote: “HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will.”

I thought, why have we been using only hyperlinks for more than 30 years to link between sites? Why not use the text itself? What if any text on any web page could become hypertext? When we read, for example, about some new gadget, we want to watch a video about it on YouTube, read reviews and comments, see photos, read an article on Wikipedia, check prices in different stores, and much more. But there are often no hyperlinks to them. To do this, we open a new tab, then typing for example, “wikipedia.org” and look for answers there. But what if all this was possible with a single click of the mouse button or a hotkey? Then users could move from site to site with little or no delay and without any extra effort, looking for the information they need.

And what if almost all UX inside the browser window were truly flexible and adaptive/customizable for each user, with completely different habits and requirements? Some people like visual menus, some prefer hotkeys, and some need a command line.

I tried to develop something that would make common and repetitive actions in the browser as easy and fast as possible. Not a gimmick, not something you need occasionally. But something that will really make your browsing experience more enjoyable and allow you to achieve more in the same amount of time.

Meet the first version of the Productivity Toolset. This is a Chrome extension that helps improve your browsing experience. But this is no ordinary browser extension. This is a full-fledged desktop application, just happened in the form of an extension. If you are a heavy browser user, it can be very useful to you!
I spent a lot of time iterating development internally. And some of the features turned out pretty cool and unique! Install the extension into your browser and see for yourself. You don't need to create an account.

The most interesting feature, in my opinion - Popup menus. It’s something like Edit Menus on iOS or Contextual Menus on Android but is fully customizable. You can create as many popup menus as you want and customize menu items/layout/size/font/color to your liking. To try it out, just install the extension and highlight text on any page. A popup menu will appear, and you can search the selected text on Google, copy to clipboard and much more!

To set the action on a popup menu item, you can use another useful extension feature: a database of 1,200+ sites that you can search using their own search. For example, you can create a new popup menu with a Hacker News item and set it to appear when you select text on any web page. Then, when you click on this item, a new tab will be opened with the search results for the selected text on the Hacker News website. If you think about it, you'll realize that with this action, you've essentially just created a dynamic link to the search results for the highlighted text on the NH site and clicked on it.

Each site was added to the database manually, and the creation of only the database took more than 3 months. I think the database alone is worth buying the extension. I plan to constantly add new sites to the database.

And of course, you can add to database any sites you want. The extension has a smart system that can automatically add a site to the database by recognizing the search engine used on this site! Just press Ctrl + Alt + Space. For example, you can add your local grocery store to the database in a few seconds without spending time on URL hacking. After that, you can instantly search this site using the popup menu, hotkey, or command line.

Another important feature of the database is that you can create groups of sites or combine them into folders and assign hotkeys and aliases to these groups or folders. This allows you to search multiple sites at once with a single click/keystroke! For example, you can create a “Gadget Research” group by adding YouTube, Google Images, The Verge, Ars Technica, Wikipedia, Amazon, and eBay sites to it and then search these 7 sites at the same time by simply highlighting the name of the gadget on any web page and clicking one hotkey. It's really cool! And if you press the hotkey without highlighting any text, the home pages of these sites will open, which can also be very useful too.

In addition to sites, you can also use the built-in extension commands in the Popup menus. For example - Copy, Paste, case changes, etc.

Other features:

- Mouse Events. You can set any action on many types of mouse events - selecting text with or without modifier key, clicking the mouse wheel, and even double-clicking the right mouse button (very useful for laptop users, but unfortunately works well only on Windows). For example, press and hold the Control key and select any text. A new page will instantly open with Google search results for the selected text.

- Command Line and Aliases. Allows you to quickly search one or many sites at once. For example, press Control+Space to open the extension’s main window and type in the command line:

g,w,y,gi,a@g Quokka

This will open 5 sites at once with search results about one of the cutest animals (these are aliases for Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Images and Google, but limited to results only from Amazon). Or, if you frequently search multiple sites, you can combine them into a group and search all sites in that group with a single alias.

If you are a designer, then the extension can be very useful to you too! The database contains many sites with digital assets - icons, illustrations, audio, video, fonts, where you can almost instantly find all the assets you need. For example, try the following command in the extension command line:

icons8,fontawesome Arrow Up

Two sites with arrow up icons will open. You can also create a group or folder with the sites you need and open them using one short alias or hotkey.
- Hotkeys. You can set an action in the browser on virtually any hotkey. Moreover, you can even use double-pressing the right or left Ctrl, Shift and Option. By default, DoubleLeftControl works like Copy, DoubleLeftShift like Paste, DoubleRightControl - Google Search and DoubleRightShift will open the site using the highlighted word as domain. For example, highlighting the word Dropbox and double-clicking the right Shift will open dropbox.com. Give it a try, it's very handy!

I analyzed how many mouse clicks or keystrokes it takes to perform one or another frequently used operation. And I thought carefully, how I can make it easier and with fewer clicks/keystrokes. For example, if you are filling out a form, you often need to insert a new value into an input field, replacing the old one. To do this, you need to press Ctrl + A, then Ctrl + V. What if it were possible by pressing a single hotkey of your choice? This is already done - try the built-in command “Clear All, Paste”. And there are many such commands, check for yourself in the HotKeys->Commands menu.

- Context menu. If the popup menu is too intrusive to you, you can always use fully customizable multi-level regular context menus. You can create multiple context menus and quickly switch between them.

- Presets. To switch from one popup menu or context menu to another and to change mouse events, it is better to use presets. Presets allow you to change the default mouse events to those specified in the preset. You can quickly switch from one preset to another using hotkeys. For example, pressing Alt + 9 switches to a preset that handles Linux-style mouse events: highlighting text automatically copies it to the clipboard, pressing the mouse wheel will paste it. Also, you can even set automatic preset switching depending on the URL of the site! For example, you can create a custom popup menu and set it to automatically appear when text is selected on the Notion site only.

- Respect for your privacy. The extension does not collect or transmit any statistics or telemetry. None of your information is shared outside of your browser. All links in the site database are direct, non-referral and do not contain any information that can be used to track users, such as referral codes, sessions, etc. The only request the extension makes is a request to the server to check your current license information once a day. Only three fields are transmitted in this request: the license key, the email that was used to purchase this key, and the id of the previous request. No other information is transmitted, and you can easily verify this by analyzing network traffic.

Simply put, you are not the product, you are my customer, and I will never hurt you.

I think Productivity Toolset can be useful for almost anyone who uses a browser. The extension will improve your browser experience and you can fully customize it for yourself. Try it and give me your feedback! I want to constantly improve it so that users feel truly happy.