Reviews for DeepL: AI translator and writing assistant
DeepL: AI translator and writing assistant by DeepL
Review by Cy "kkm" K'Nelson
Rated 1 out of 5
by Cy "kkm" K'Nelson, 2 years agoThe extension functionality is A-OK, solid 5/5. It's the implementation that kills it usefulness, and barely scrapes 0/5. I could go into the negative score numbers, but boy, where I would've stopped then...
I had to uninstall the extension because it throws its trash around all over the browser. It injects a humongous CSS stylesheet, 115KB(!) in size, into *every single open tab*, regardless of DeepL translation being ever used. I estimated that I used the selection translation pop-up at about one in every 500 to 1000 pages. This is a truly humongous waste of resources. The stylesheet contains 734 selectors, 2999 property settings and two @media width breakpoints. You'd have a hard time convincing me that this is a bare minimum necessary to display a simple pop-up box…
And then, in any case, a sensibly written extension would have delayed loading its CSS until it is actually needed, i.e. until it actually displays something. And load it into a sandbox, so that it's gone when the pop-up is closed: come think of it, DOM shadow roots were invented for a reason, and scoping resources in time was one of the two major ones. Now, the funny part, albeit not ha-ha funny: the extension does in fact use a shadow root for the pop-up, and… yes, you guessed it, loads another copy of its juggernaut CSS sheet into it. Why it also stuffs all this useless CSS everywhere it only can is beyond me, but loading the CPU with the browser's failing to match the extra 750 selectors every time the layout is recomputed—and "responsive" layouts on dynamically changing pages have to be deeply recomputed often!—isn't something I can use. I have better ways to waste my CPU than this extension.
As soon as the issue is fixed, I'm upgrading my rating to 5/5 not thinking twice. I hope that this is just an oversight, a bad design decision that could be soon reassessed and undone.
I had to uninstall the extension because it throws its trash around all over the browser. It injects a humongous CSS stylesheet, 115KB(!) in size, into *every single open tab*, regardless of DeepL translation being ever used. I estimated that I used the selection translation pop-up at about one in every 500 to 1000 pages. This is a truly humongous waste of resources. The stylesheet contains 734 selectors, 2999 property settings and two @media width breakpoints. You'd have a hard time convincing me that this is a bare minimum necessary to display a simple pop-up box…
And then, in any case, a sensibly written extension would have delayed loading its CSS until it is actually needed, i.e. until it actually displays something. And load it into a sandbox, so that it's gone when the pop-up is closed: come think of it, DOM shadow roots were invented for a reason, and scoping resources in time was one of the two major ones. Now, the funny part, albeit not ha-ha funny: the extension does in fact use a shadow root for the pop-up, and… yes, you guessed it, loads another copy of its juggernaut CSS sheet into it. Why it also stuffs all this useless CSS everywhere it only can is beyond me, but loading the CPU with the browser's failing to match the extra 750 selectors every time the layout is recomputed—and "responsive" layouts on dynamically changing pages have to be deeply recomputed often!—isn't something I can use. I have better ways to waste my CPU than this extension.
As soon as the issue is fixed, I'm upgrading my rating to 5/5 not thinking twice. I hope that this is just an oversight, a bad design decision that could be soon reassessed and undone.
1,011 reviews
- Rated 5 out of 5by John J. Freeze, 9 days ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Madeleine, 14 days agoHuge WHITE interface with no dark mode. Website is pretty bad, but this extension managed to be even worse.
The quality of translations and rewriting is pretty good. But the only way to use it seriously is from the API. - Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 16962838, 16 days ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by kit26, 18 days agoThis is good for translating text whilst reading, just highlight the text and choose what language. I've been using DeepL for a while and find it very useful
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 19819955, a month ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by Jed, 2 months agoThis is a great tool, however it needs some improvements. The button that is displayed when the user types in the text field, overlaps with the button displayed by another add-on - "Grammar and Spell Checker - LanguageTool". Can this be fixed?
- Rated 4 out of 5by Didactic Traveller, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by huddle493, 2 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by sharif, 2 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 13379403, 3 months agoIt doesn't work/anymore, or maybe I just don't understand it. It's definitely not intuitive!
I'll use the website instead, at least that works perfectly!
Ne fonctionne pas/plus ou alors je n'y comprends rien. Pas intuitif dans tous les cas !
Je passe par le site, au moins là ça fonctionne nickel ! - Rated 5 out of 5by MountainVibes, 3 months ago
- Rated 4 out of 5by NXNSTXP, 3 months agoI really like your extension. Please add a dark mode for the extension and for the translator that opens in the browser sidebar. Thank you.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Romain Leclaire, 3 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Michele, 4 months ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Esoppe, 4 months agoIt seems to refuse translations ("can't translate at this time" error) if you are not logged in to a deepL account. At least for a few minutes, not sure what triggers it.
Developer response
posted 4 months agoSorry to hear that the extension hasn't worked well for you. We would appreciate if you could share more information about the issues you’re experiencing through this form: https://support.deepl.com/hc/en-us/requests/new. Please note that you will need a DeepL account to file support tickets. - Rated 1 out of 5by aUser, 4 months agosince you added AI to your product a while ago all goes to shit I'm completely done with deepl
- Rated 1 out of 5by kkslidermight, 4 months agoit literally just opens the translation frames of the website in a sidebar. They put no effort into this. The in-site translations are abyssmaly slow. Paygated full-site translations.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Xenofon, 4 months agoThis extension is trustworthy. It works greatly, if you are working often with foreign internet sites, that you would like to translate to your language. The translation is of superior DeepL quality and the extension just makes the handling even more comfortable, since, you don't have to highlight and copy texts or anything like that.