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Built-In Goodies
Google's Chrome browser is growing faster than almost anyone imagined. In its short existence, it hasn’t yet achieved widespread use at the magnitude of Mozilla's Firefox, but Chrome (at 7.3% of the browser market) has proven very popular among Web users with a thirst for speed. At the end of last year, Chrome became even more competitive. A software update in December gave users and developers the ability to install and create extensions, like Firefox’s add-ons, and a gallery of these tools opened to the public in late January. Chrome can now be customized, tailored, and made more efficient. This article checks in on the progress of those tools (most of which can be found here), and evaluates what we think are the best options for Chrome users.
But first we take a quick look at Chrome's useful--but often forgotten--built in tools.
Google Translate: Any webpage that doesn’t appear in English will have a small pop-up that asks if you’d like to translate it automatically. It’s so easy, a caveman could do it.
Synchronize Bookmarks: Need to keep your bookmarks synched? Why not connect them to your Google account and have them synch automatically, directly through Chrome? It’s just one click and a login away.
Reopen the pages that were last open: Ever accidentally close your browser? We’ve all been there. Now you can reopen all those lost pages instantly, just by checking off this option in the options menu.
Autofill URL Bar: Ever since we started using Chrome, it’s been hard to use any other browser. The main reason, besides excellent speed, is the autofill URL bar. It autofills the website you’re looking for based on how often you visit. On top of that, it even acts as a preview search for sites you haven’t been to yet!
Read on to see our favorite new Chrome extensions, and leave a comment below if we left out your favorite.
Pretty much all these add-ons already exist for FF, and the rest already existed under different names. It's like the south park ep "the simpsons already did it!".
Pretty much all these add-ons already exist for FF, and the rest already existed under different names. It's like the south park ep "the simpsons already did it!".
I should hope most of these exist for FF--Firefox has been around A LOT longer than Chrome. But some people like Chrome better--and they want to have all the same perks as Firefox. We wrote this article for those people.
I found all extentions links broken
each time same message: "Item not found. This item may have been removed by its author."
I found all extentions links broken each time same message: "Item not found. This item may have been removed by its author."
KAMLOTTON, it seems we've got a bug in the site that we're trying to work out. But if you want to see the extensions, you can click the link and remove the %20%20%20. That'll take you to the direct page, or just go to http://chrome.google.com/extensions/
Lovely, except I still in a long lasting and stable relationship with Firefox. Firefox is my favorite browsers since many years, I really can't break the habit of using it and I still find it to be the best overall, plus Firefox addons are still better...
Lovely, except I still in a long lasting and stable relationship with Firefox. Firefox is my favorite browsers since many years, I really can't break the habit of using it and I still find it to be the best overall, plus Firefox addons are still better...
I totally agree with you. However, I sometimes am amazed at how quickly Chrome has caught up in so many areas...and think about how long it took for FF to get that much cred....years and years. That's what you get when you're backed by Google and not an opensource grass-roots effort (at the time).
I may be the only one that thinks this, but wouldn't it be easier just to list all of the extensions on one page with a short description and then have links to the longer descriptions?
The whole slide show thing just annoys me. But, then again, maybe its just me.
Nice review but I really dont like the layout, haveing pics instead of text for the tabs looks nice but is next to useless.
Im suprised you didnt mention SpeedDial....
https://chrome.google.com/extension [...] jdpbbkikmi
...I dont use it because the recently closed list doesnt list windows/sessions, but 100,000+ plus users seem to like it
And a personal fav for me is Search Center....
https://chrome.google.com/extension [...] jdceedhdmf
...just adds that little bit of convenience the omnibars search is missing
Youtube for music? Isn't that like radio quality?
[a quick search indicates that audio, despite the rate uploaded at, is transcoded to many bitrates and then played back depending on bandwith loads (both ends?), as far as I can tell.]
Regardless...and I'm a fan of many more eclectic bands, so...there are TONS of songs from my library that are simply not on Youtube. The ones that make it to the site are often user uploads of horrible audio quality...even noticeable on mediocre speakers.
That said, it is a convenient way to listen to a gigantic library of songs with a few clicks!
[ed.]
damn...just checked and three of the five 'obscure' bands had a bit of contend uploaded...and, they seemed to only sound crappy b/c my lame computer speakers. still take a little offense to keeping a music library, but part of my rebuttal seems on shaky ground.
I like being able to reopen a web page that I accidently closed.
Due to lack of support, Adblock for chrome actually doesn't prevent most ads from downloading, it just hides them as quickly as possible. You're actually not hurting most sites if you'd never click on ads anyway.
I like firefox, but it seems to be getting more and more bloated as newer versions come out, and doesnt seem as responsive as it used to be, especially after you start adding addons. I havent had that problem with chrome. I really hope FF4 turns things around when it is finally finished. As it stands Im noticing myself using Chrome more and more.