8 Cool Tips & Tricks to Make Most Of Google Chrome

The popularity of any software can be guessed from the number of hacks that trail it after a release. Or the number of add-ons. Google Chrome seems to be not only holding its own but also trotting along. As of April 2009, it is the world’s fourth most popular browser. Not bad for a browser which is few months away from its first birthday.

As user opinions sally back and forth about browser preferences, one thing is not open to question. Firefox is definitely more expandable and customizable than all others out there (Don’t they call it the Swiss Army knife for the web).

But if you like the Chrome’s agility then there are ways to make it more versatile. We at MakeUseOf.com have gone over quite a lot of ground with the Chrome. You can read about some tips and tricks here and here.

Here are some more ways to reach under the hood and exploit some handy Chrome features.

1. Make Chrome’s consume less memory

By default, Chrome is a multi-process browser. Yawn! What’s that? Simply, it means that each tab runs as a separate process asking for separate resources from the computer. The current working tab gets the most priority over the others. This was intentionally designed to make web apps run faster in Chrome. This feature makes the browser zippier and more stable even with multiple open tabs.
But if you aren’t a heavy user and use the browser to surf only a single site at a time then disabling multiple processes can free up some CPU resources. To handle each web process Chrome has three settings –
–process-per-tab The default mode; each tab gets an independent process of its own. This increases the rendering of webpages and makes the browser stable as each tab is a separate process from the rest. But it also consumes memory.
–process-per-site One process for each unique website; for instance a user with two tabs open for Gmail and another for MakeUseOf will have the two Google tabs running under the same process.
–single-process The simplest mode; all tabs run in a single process, much like the other browsers we have now. This setting frees up memory for other applications. This is what we are looking for.
Create a shortcut for Chrome. Open the Properties tab. Edit the Target field as shown in the picture by appending –single-process to the path.

Similarly you can create two more shortcuts for the other two processes to handle your web sessions in three ways.

2. Manage tabs with the Task Manager

This is an offshoot of Google Chrome’s multi-process nature which allows each tab to run separate from the other. This allows us to manage, reload or shut down each tab without affecting the rest of our browsing. All this can be done through the Task Manager. Press Shiftand Escape to start the task manager or right click on the blue top bar. An unresponsive tab can be shut down without bringing down the browser by a simple press of the End processbutton.


3. Some stats for nerds

There is a simple way to tell which browser is using the most resources on your computer. Chrome’s task manager lets you examine the memory use of the opened browsers on your computer irrespective of make. Open task manager and click on the ‘Stats for nerds’ link at the bottom. A new tab opens with detailed memory info for all running browsers. The second part of the page also describes Chrome’s process usage stats.


4. Some more stats on the Resources page

More for site administrators than for you and me but the resources page has a ton of info to offer. To track the resources used by a web page – right click inside the page. Select Inspect element – go to the Resources tab and reload the web page. You can view a list of images, scripts and objects from the web page and you can sort them by size or by loading time.


5. Drag to resize any text box

Do you feel that the size of a text box on any website is not worthy of your thoughts…then just place your mouse on the bottom right edge and drag to increase the size. Give MakeUseOf.com’s comment box the first drag.


6. Split Chrome into double-pane view

This bookmarklet from Chromeplugins.org is incredibly useful. The dual view feature is useful when you want to compare two websites or search results side by side. Drag the Chrome Split Browser bookmarklet into your bookmarks toolbar. When you click the bookmarklet, it asks you to choose the two websites you want and displays them in a double pane.


7. Startup with multiple pages

On launch, Chrome opens up with the ‘Most visited’ area. But it also lets us set options for starting the day by opening our most favored sites in several tabs at once. Click on the wrench icon (Customize and control Chrome) on the top right corner. Under Options – Basic tab we can add the pages we want to open on startup.


8. Drag and drop downloads from Chrome

After finishing a download, you can copy it to the desktop or to any other folder by a simple drag and drop directly from Google Chrome.

Did I miss any of your favorite tips or tricks? Let us know in the comments and lets help each other create a more sleek Chrome experience.

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10 Must-have Google Chrome Extensions

The nature of my writing and consulting work means I spend a lot of time working in a web browser window, so I am always looking to maximize my productivity browser-wise. Recently, I made the switch to the latest Google Chrome beta for Windows because I was looking to take a break from Firefox and wanted to try Google’s latest browser developments.

While Chrome can’t yet match Firefox’s massive extension ecosystem, more useful extensions are becoming available for Google’s browser every day. Here are my must-have extensions for the new Google Chrome user:

Brizzly. Since I am trying to better integrate Twitter and Facebook into my professional communications in 2010, the Brizzly extension, which is a Twitter and Facebook reading/updating tool, ranks as a must-have in my book.

Shareaholic for Google Chrome. This extension lets you share web pages through major social media sites and other services, like Gmail and Evernote.

Google Apps Shortcuts. This shortcut provides easy access to all of your Google Apps, including Google Wave and Google Voice. You can even begin creating new email, documents, spreadsheets and presentations using this extension.

Evernote Web Clipper. We’ve written about Evernote in the past, and the Evernote extension provides the same web clipping functionality you already enjoy in Mozilla Firefox and in Internet Explorer. I use the web clipper whenever I want to capture research from the web.

Xmarks Bookmarks Sync. One of the biggest draws of Firefox for me was the capability to sync bookmarks across my home office PCs. Now with the Xmarks Bookmarks Sync extension you can have the same feature using Chrome.

Aviary Screen Capture. I take a lot of screen captures, and like the fact that Aviary Screen capture lets you capture and manipulate screen captures from within Google Chrome.

Bit.ly. This extension comes in handy if you need fast access to a URL shortener. Clicking on the Bit.ly extension launches a sidebar:

html2pdf. This extension enables you to save the HTML page you are viewing to PDF. I find this extension handy when I want to save a receipt or a piece of research.

Google Reader Notifier. Google Reader is my RSS reader of choice, so the Google Reader Notifier Extension was a natural choice for me.

TooMany Tabs for Chrome. I’ve been known to keep way too many browser tabs open especially when I am in full-on research and writing mode. TooMany Tabs for Chrome helps to keep me organized and my computer’s memory usage in check.

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Blog This! (by Google) - Google Chrome extension gallery

Blog This! (by Google) - Google Chrome extension gallery Read more...