This wacky ol' World Wide Web of ours has plenty of good things going for it, but customization isn't exactly its core strength.

For the most part, the web is what it is — a take-it-or-leave-it sort of affair. And especially when your business leans on lots of browser-based tools and services, as so many companies do these days, that can really limit how useful and efficient of an experience you and your teammates can have.

That's precisely the problem a startup called PixieBrix set out to solve. PixieBrix lets you take total control of the web and make it work any way you want. That means you can simplify common website interfaces to eliminate distractions and optimize your environment, for one — but even more powerfully, it means you can add elements into websites and turn any standard site into your own custom, company-specific workspace.

Sound wild? It is. And we've just barely scratched the surface of what this thing can do.

At its core, PixieBrix is a browser extension that integrates deeply with Chrome and allows you to mix and match a variety of "bricks" — or building blocks, in a sense — to change the way virtually any website looks and works. Each brick performs an action, anything from highlighting elements on a page to creating a prepopulated email. Many of the bricks automate tasks and/or integrate with popular business services, too, such as Asana, Google Workspace, HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zapier.

It's a lofty concept to wrap your head around, and it's easiest to understand with concrete examples. So let's get right into the fun part and explore some of the specific ways PixieBrix could work for you — starting with some of the service's premade "blueprints" that make website customization especially easy:

Brittany Joiner demonstrates how to use the "New Trello card from selected text" blueprint.

Those are the PixieBrix equivalents of plug-and-play customizations. Where the service's real power comes into play, though, is when you start digging in and getting your hands dirty with your own made-from-scratch modifications.

Fair warning: This part of PixieBrix isn't for the faint of heart. But for anyone who's comfortable with basic low-code tinkering, it isn't too terribly technical — and in a company context, it'd likely be an IT person doing the initial setup, anyway, and then sharing the results with teams (more on that in a moment).

Once the PixieBrix extension is installed in Chrome, you can access its control panel by opening Chrome’s developer console — which is most easily accomplished via the Ctrl-Shift-I (or ⌘-Shift-i) shortcut. You’ll want to make sure the console is docked at the bottom of the screen, which you can do by clicking the three-dot menu icon in its corner.

Then, you’ll simply find the PixieBrix section within that area, and you’re off to the races.

The most important piece of the puzzle is the “Add” command at the left side of the PixieBrix panel. Click that, and you’ll find a list of elements you can add into whatever website you’re currently viewing.

The PixieBrix “Add” command allowed me to add this button (a plain-text button, in this case) right into the Computerworld website. (Click image to enlarge it.)

And that’s where PixieBrix starts to show its true efficiency-enhancing muscle. Let’s look at some examples of the sorts of productivity-minded modifications you could make on, say, LinkedIn:

This special sidebar automatically retrieves every article written about the LinkedIn page’s subject on Computerworld and displays that info in an easy-to-access list. (Click image to enlarge it.)

And all of that’s still just scratching the surface of what PixieBrix can do. The service is in the midst of adding even more capabilities, with an expanded array of interactive elements for areas like that sidebar panel and a fresh round of funding to support that growth.

The main challenge with PixieBrix, as we alluded to a moment ago, is that setting up your own web-wide customizations isn’t exactly the most intuitive process. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy, and even I felt a little overwhelmed trying to navigate the service’s web of options and variables.

But here’s the important thing to remember: In a company context, every average schmo wouldn’t be getting into the nitty-gritty of this setup. Instead, it’d be centralized — and someone from IT would likely do the initial configuration and then use PixieBrix’s team management dashboard to make certain customizations available for specific people or departments.

And that is something PixieBrix makes incredibly painless. Once you have whatever customizations your company requires all set up and ready, it’s literally just a few quick clicks on the PixieBrix dashboard to deploy any or all of those profiles to anyone or everyone in your business.

PixieBrix makes it easy to manage and deploy customizations to individuals or teams within an organization. (Click image to enlarge it.)

And that’s where PixieBrix makes its money, by the way: While the service is free with certain limitations for individuals and small teams, you have to start paying once you reach a size of six users or more — $10 per user per month for the starter-level Pro plan or $30 per user per month for the fully featured Business plan.

For the power to bend the web to your will and make all of your company’s tools more consistent and connected, that might just be a price worth paying.

Contributing Editor JR Raphael serves up tasty morsels about the human side of technology. Hungry for more? Join him on Twitter or sign up for his weekly newsletter to get fresh tips and insight in your inbox every Friday.

Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.

Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.