These days more and more people are depending on the mobile networks like 3G and 4G LTE for their internet connection requirements. Even though these mobile networks are costlier than the cabled connections accessed over the WiFi, newer generations find it more convenient to be mobile than to get stuck at one point just to use a WiFi network. If you have to access sites using a 3G/4G dongle on your PC, then perhaps you would want to reduce the data consumption to make the data packs last longer. We have posted before about various ways of reducing the data usage, for example, the Google Web Light that helps you access faster on slower connections and reduces the internet usage bandwidth.
Another such method to reduce the data usage for the Chrome web browsers is to disable the images on a website completely by using the Text Mode extension for Chrome. This extension is very simple in its approach and can be activated by clicking on the Text Mode icon in the toolbar. All it does it replace all the images on a web page with a local image store in browser cache. This results in reduction of downloaded files and the web site loads way faster because all of those images embedded in that webpage are no longer required.
In addition to the images, the Text Mode extension also blocks videos and Flash animations too. Even though this makes the webpages load quicker than in the regular mode, it can result in some missing information that depends on images or other blocked files. For example, in the above snapshot of the New York Times webpage, it is not visible whether the Nikkei stock exchange has gone up or down.
In the options for the Text Mode extension, you can choose whether you want to remove all the colors and turn the webpage completely black and white. This will remove the CSS and font properties for all the text and make it look black and white. You can also choose the replacement images from a set of five images.
You can get the Text Mode extension for Chrome from https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/text-mode/adelhekhakakocomdfejiipdnaadiiib.