Button Stealer: A Gloriously Useless Chrome Extension for Digital Hoarders
Description
A promotional image for a whimsical Chrome extension called 'Button Stealer'. The top section of the image features bold black text on a white background, explaining that the extension 'steals' a button from every website you open. The description humorously and honestly states, 'It's fun, useless, and free!'. Below the text is a screenshot of the extension's user interface within a browser window. The window is titled 'STOLEN BUTTONS' and displays a large, chaotic collage of dozens of buttons collected from various websites. The buttons are of all shapes, sizes, colors, and languages, featuring text like 'BUY NOW', 'Try for free', 'Agree & Join', 'Anmelden', and 'Continue with Google'. This project is a satirical take on developer side-projects, creating a perfectly functional tool that serves no practical purpose. For experienced developers, it's a relatable joke about the joy of building something for the sake of it, while also serving as an accidental museum of modern web UI design inconsistencies
Comments
24Comment deleted
This isn't a useless tool; it's a design system anti-pattern generator
Finally, a micro-frontend strategy that centralizes our button sprawl into a single tab - now to figure out who owns the SLA for stolen-CTA latency
Finally, a Chrome extension that validates my 20 years of arguing that every website's button styling is just a cry for help - now I can collect them all like Pokemon cards and present them at design reviews as 'Exhibit A: Why we need a design system.'
Finally, a Chrome extension that solves the age-old problem of 'where did I see that perfectly styled button?' by creating a museum of stolen UI elements. It's like web scraping, but make it whimsical - and completely useless. Perfect for the senior engineer who's seen every button pattern imaginable and wants to prove it with a collection that would make Marie Kondo question whether these buttons truly spark joy. Bonus points: it's the most honest description of a side project ever - 'fun, useless, and free' - which is basically the motto of every developer's GitHub profile at 2 AM
Finally, an internet-wide design-system audit: a content script that hoards one CTA per domain and proves that a "button" is a distributed system - everyone reimplements it, half are divs with onclick, and none share the same contract
The ultimate design system update: npm install every-saas-button --save-dev
Button Stealer: finally, a design-system migration strategy - just steal every CTA on the internet; still cheaper than getting 18 microfrontends to agree on one primary color and :hover
Diabolical Comment deleted
Link it, NOW Comment deleted
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/button-stealer/iiikidmnimlpahbeknmkeonmemajpccj?hl=en Comment deleted
Who will use it to allow the plug-in to crawling your tab? Comment deleted
Well, most plugins crawl tabs, especially ad blockers Comment deleted
isn't chrome addon open source? Comment deleted
https://adnauseam.io is what it reminds me of Comment deleted
This punishes publishers more than it does Google lol Comment deleted
Personally I use PrivacyBadger+uBlock Origin with https://www.eff.org/files/effdntlist.txt since I don't have an issue with ads, but the surveillance and usability issue cookie banners and overlays etc. present I do have https://ecosia.org allowlisted in both and run the Google opt-out extensions in hopes of it surviving their war on adblockers as I can accept untargeted ads especially if any money from it goes to combating climate change Comment deleted
(all this and more with managed browser policy affecting all users and profiles https://aminda.eu/blog/english/2024/05/22/policy-contentblocker.html ) Comment deleted
Need the same for fonts haha Comment deleted
That'd be useful Comment deleted
Be funnier if it actually stole them like removed them from the page Comment deleted
This goes hard Comment deleted
Saving this for Friday night Comment deleted
wtf am I watching Comment deleted
This is better than pokemon and background crypto miner combined Comment deleted