Stealing Buttons

What is the Button Stealer Chrome Extension?

The Button Stealer Chrome extension is a nifty tool designed to capture buttons from various websites you visit. Created as a unique solution for web designers and developers, this extension saves you the hassle of manually copying and pasting button styles.

With Button Stealer, simply browse the web, and the extension will automatically collect buttons you encounter. It stores these buttons, allowing you to revisit and explore them later for design inspiration.

This extension cleverly grabs the visual and functional aspects of web buttons, making it an excellent resource for anyone looking to expand their design library. It's particularly useful for those moments when you see a button style you love but don't want to dive deep into its code.

Overall, Button Stealer simplifies the process of gathering web button ideas, ensuring you always have an arsenal of inspiring designs at your fingertips.

How Does the Button Stealer Collect Buttons?

The Button Stealer Chrome extension captures buttons using a sophisticated but effective method. Here's a step-by-step breakdown of how it works:

1. Scan for Buttons: It starts by targeting all <button> and <a> tags on a webpage, which are potential button elements.

2. Filter Criteria: It applies various filters to skip unwanted buttons, such as:

   • Material icons and symbols
   • Invisible buttons (opacity set to zero)
   • Buttons outside the viewport
   • Accessibility jump links and empty buttons
   • Buttons with specific words like "skip" or "add"

3. Style Extraction: The extension grabs the computed styles for each remaining button. This includes inheritable properties and parent styles.

4. Ignore Specific CSS Properties: It skips certain CSS properties like transform matrices and specific margins that could cause rendering issues.

5. Store Buttons: Valid buttons are cloned, their styles parsed, and then stored locally. They can be retrieved later for design inspiration.

6. Handle Maximum Limit: If the storage limit is reached, it pops older buttons to maintain only the most recent captures.

These steps ensure only the most relevant and functional buttons are collected, making Button Stealer an invaluable resource for designers and developers.

What Can You Do with the Collected Buttons?

The Button Stealer Chrome extension offers a treasure trove of opportunities for designers and developers. Here are some creative and practical ways to use the collected buttons:

Design Inspiration

Gleaning through the buttons collected, you can find unique styles and functionalities that inspire your next design project. Whether it's finding the perfect gradient, shadow, or hover effect, the assortment of buttons can spark new ideas.

Prototyping

When crafting a design prototype, having a diverse collection of buttons on hand can streamline the process. You can quickly apply styles you’ve admired without needing to recreate them from scratch.

Learning and Improving Skills

Studying the collected buttons allows you to learn various CSS techniques and best practices used by different designers. It’s an excellent way to improve your skill set and stay updated with current trends.

Code Snippets

The extension captures not only the visual elements but also the underlying code. This means you can dissect and repurpose code snippets to fit your own projects, saving substantial time and effort.

These collected buttons serve as a comprehensive resource to enhance creativity and efficiency, making the Button Stealer a must-have tool for any web designer or developer.

How Does Button Stealer Handle CSS and Styling?

Button Stealer Chrome extension deals with CSS and styling intricacies in a smart and efficient way. It ensures that captured buttons are accurately rendered by tackling various CSS properties and potential styling issues.

To begin with, the extension extracts computed styles for each button element, which includes inheritable properties and parent styles. This helps maintain the original look and feel of the captured buttons.

Next, Button Stealer skips problematic properties that might interfere with proper rendering. It ignores transform matrices and certain margins that can cause positioning issues. By doing this, it avoids displaying broken or misaligned buttons.

Additionally, the extension applies filters to handle styling quirks. It skips elements with zero opacity, those outside the viewport, and buttons with specific text like "skip" or "add".

Through these meticulous steps, Button Stealer ensures that collected buttons are both functional and visually consistent, making it a reliable tool for designers seeking web button inspiration.

Is Button Stealer Open Source?

Yes, the Button Stealer Chrome extension is open source. This means anyone can view, modify, and contribute to its code.

For those interested, the complete source code is available on GitHub. Whether you want to explore how it works, customize it for your needs, or contribute to its development, you can check it out here on GitHub.

Feel free to dive into the code and see the innovative techniques used to capture and handle web buttons!

How to Install and Use Button Stealer?

1. Visit the Chrome Web Store: Open your Chrome browser and navigate to the Chrome Web Store.

2. Search for Button Stealer: In the search bar, type "Button Stealer Chrome extension" and press Enter.

3. Select the Extension: Find the Button Stealer extension in the search results. Click on it to open the extension's page.

4. Add to Chrome: Click the "Add to Chrome" button. A prompt will appear asking for permission to add the extension. Confirm by clicking "Add Extension".

5. Pin the Extension: Once installed, you'll see the Button Stealer icon in the extensions toolbar. Click the puzzle piece icon to open the extensions menu and pin Button Stealer for easy access.

6. Start Using the Extension: Browse the internet as usual. When you find a button you like, click on the Button Stealer icon. The extension will automatically capture the button's style and properties.

7. Access Collected Buttons: Click the Button Stealer icon to open your stash and view the collected buttons. You can click on a button to visit the site it was collected from for additional context.

Following these steps, you can effortlessly gather and utilize web buttons for your design projects. Happy button collecting!