Matlock for Chrome

Learning the ropes when it comes to web design is definitely a very complex task that requires a fair share of know-how and a lot of work and experience. That said, there is a tool you can use to determine how a website works, and it’s called Matlock.

Matlock is a cross-browser extension (available for Chrome and Firefox) that provides a hassle-free way of finding out which open-source libraries the websites you visit use. The main principle behind this useful extension is that if you know how a website works and runs, it can potentially help you make your own website better.

Before anything else, it’s also worth noting that the extension searches the page you’re currently visiting for various open-source libraries, but only those hosted on GitHub. Still, considering that GitHub is the biggest code hosting platform for collaboration and version control, it’s not surprising it also hosts the large majority of open-source libraries.

The tool can be deployed on your Chrome browser just as easily as any other extension from the Chrome Web Store, and it works without requiring any type of intervention on your behalf. Just click the Matlock icon in Chrome toolbar, and the extension readily presents a list of all the open-source libraries used via a very unpretentious GUI.

From its simple GUI, you can also read more about the team behind the project, and even contribute to and support the whole endeavor, as well as report bugs if you happen to experience problems. By clicking any of the presented open-source libraries, users are directed to their official GitHub pages, and that’s really about it.

While Matlock for Chrome won’t get many day-to-day users too excited, it will surely be appreciated by those who are into web design and want a quick way of finding out which open-source libraries a specific webpage uses. Today it’s a simple extension, but in the future things might change for the better, as the developers behind the project have plans for some exciting new features such as programming language and framework detection.