Comparing web library analyzers

If you ever land on a site and wonder how it was built, then you might find these Chrome extensions useful. This article will compare the two most prominent options.

Normally, you’d have to go into the source and http headers yourself to find this information. Image from Pixabay

Library Sniffer

• https://github.com/justjavac/ChromeSnifferPlus
• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/library-sniffer/fhhdlnnepfjhlhilgmeepgkhjmhhhjkh

Library Detector

• https://github.com/johnmichel/Library-Detector-for-Chrome
• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/library-detector/cgaocdmhkmfnkdkbnckgmpopcbpaaejo

Raw comparison results

github.com

Library Detector — found nothing.
Library Sniffer — found SPDY, GitHub.

cnn.com

Library detector mentions jQuery twice, and core-js is a huge amount of text for some reason. jQuery 1.12.3, jQuery (Fast path), React, Modernizr 3.6.0, Moment.js 2.29.1, core-js.

reddit.com

It is pretty interesting to see that reddit uses Varnish and react.

youtube.com