Use Chrome URLs to See History, Bookmarks & Downloads

Chrome can show you some of your browser data and settings via special Chrome URLs, which is a handy way to see the info in your browser — especially as all options are searchable.

You can view your bookmarks, downloads and history by typing “chrome://bookmarks,” “chrome://downloads,” or “chrome://history” in the omnibox.

Read More

Use AutoFill to Auto-Complete an Address

If you find yourself typing your address time and time again, you might want to consider Chrome’s AutoFill options which can remember it and save you the repeat effort.

To activate the feature, click on the wrench icon, select “Options,” then click on the “Personal Stuff,” then choose “AutoFill options.” By selecting “Add address,” you can enter your details. The next time you are presented with a form, you won’t have to manually type it all in.

You can also choose to add a credit card via AutoFill, but for security reasons we’d advise thinking twice before going down that route.

Read More

Carry Out Calculations in the Omnibox

In addition to being a URL bar and a search field, Chrome’s “omnibox” is also a basic calculator. Rather than load up your computer’s calculator, Google or Wolfram Alpha, you can just type your mathematical query into the omnibox and the result will show up where you’d normally see auto-suggestions.

Beyond simple sums, this also works for unit conversions like feet-to-meters, pints-to-liters, etc,.

Read More

Add a Home Button to the Toolbar

Chrome boasts a minimalist design that many love, but there are some users who just need to have a “home” button to click.

Adding a home button to Chrome is very easy — just click on the wrench icon at the top-right, select “Options,” and under the basic tab you’ll see a check box for “show Home button on the toolbar.” Hit it and you’ll never be homeless again.

Read More

Pin Tabs in Place on the Browser Bar

If you are going to be using a site or service a lot in one web session, you can “pin” a tab in Chrome, which will shrink the window down to the size of the favicon, leaving more room for multi-tasking. It also prevents tabs from getting lost on the side of the screen when you have many open at once.

To do this, right-click on the tab you want to pin and hit “Pin tab.” To enlarge the tab, just right-click and hit “Pin tab” again to uncheck the option.

Read More

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.

Read More

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 theChrome 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.

Read More

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.

Read More

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 – Basictab we can add the pages we want to open on startup.

Read More

10 Cool and Useful Google Chrome Tricks You Must Know

It’s been a while since we wrote something about the fastest browser in the world, Google Chrome. Even though the soon-to-be-OS browser comes with one of the simplest UIs around, there are quite a few tricks that you can learn to get the most out of it.

Here’s a look at some of the coolest and most useful Google Chrometricks that you should know:

1. Add home button to Toolbar

A petty annoyance users face after installing Google Chrome or Chromium is the absence of a dedicated ‘Home’ button on the toolbar. Almost all the major browsers have that button; however, Google sticking to its minimalist policy decided to leave it out. Don’t fret though as you can easily enable it by following these steps:

Click the Wrench icon -> Go to Options/Preferences -> Check the checkbox that says ‘Show Home Button’ and you’re done. Alternatively you can open your default homepage using the combination Alt+Home.

2. Mastering the Omnibar

Google has revolutionized web browsing by merging the address bar and the search box into a neat little feature called the Omnibar. This Omnibar can be used in two ways --- Typing in the address say www.junauza.com which will take you to our site, and typing in TechSource that will perform a query for the same term on Google. To avoid confusion between searches and addresses, use a question mark before the term to perform a plain search. This is useful if you are performing ambiguous queries like ‘example.com’ on Google. If you’re more of a keyboard person, then Pressing Ctrl+L anywhere on the page will put focus on the Omnibar allowing you to type the address/query. Similarly, pressing Ctrl+K anywhere on the page will help you perform a search query through the Omni bar. Note that, the searches made through the Omnibar will depend on which search engine you select as your default one in Chrome.

3. Undo a closed tab

If you accidently close an important tab, you’ll realize that there is no conspicuous option to recover it, except by going to history (Ctrl+H). This trouble can be avoided by remembering a simple shortcut that quickly recovers the most recently closed tab. Just press the combo Ctrl+Shift+T anywhere and you’ll get your tab back.

4. Quickly go undercover

Google comes with a private browsing mode that can prove to be indispensable when using a public computer. This browsing mode titled ‘incognito mode’ allows you to browse as usual but without recording any of your data. This means no cache, no cookies and no history. The option can easily be enabled using the wrench menu. But hey, why take so much trouble when you can use a quick shortcut? Just press Ctrl+Shift+N anywhere on the page and a new window will pop up. Any sites you visit using that window will not be cached or recorded. Please note that Incognito mode doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to evade ISP and Government monitoring.

5. Quickly Cycle thru tabs

If you have too many tabs open at the same time, cycling through them can be quite a drag. Using Chrome’s built-in shortcuts you can efficiently address that problem. Just press Ctrl+Tab to cycle through the tabs from left to right. To cycle in other direction, simply use Ctrl+Shift+Tab. However, if you want to access a specific tab, you can always use Ctrl + the tab number. For example, you can open the 2nd tab from the right using the combo Ctrl + 2.

6. Kill slow processes

Any person who has used a Windows computer long enough will never forget killing those dreaded process that slowed the PC down. Even though the rocket fast Chrome rarely slows down, its extensions tend to freeze sometimes. This in turn, slows down the whole browser. Chrome provides a smart way to handle this problem by providing a Task Manager for the browser itself. To access it, just use the combo Shift+Escape and a familiar-looking task manager opens up. Check the stats for the plug-in that hog memory the most and kill it by selecting it and pressing the End Process button. Also, it is important to remember that too many Google Chrome extensions will slow down the browser eventually. Even though Google Chrome is faster than Firefox, it cannot effectively handle too many plugins at once, which Firefox can.

7. Search within sites from omnibox

The oh-so-awesome Omnibar comes with another great feature that will make your browsing hugely productive. Normally, say if you want to search Amazon for that cool Kung-fu book you want to buy – you’d type Amazon.com in the address bar, search for the book and learn Kung-fu the normal way. If you want to a quicker way to do the same process, try using Chrome’s Omnibar. Google Chrome comes with a nifty little feature that allows you to search within various sites from the Omnibar itself. Try typing Youtube, then press tab. Now any query you enter here will search the YouTube site not Google. Cool huh?

You can also try adding TechSource to the list by going to the Manage Search Engines (Wrench -> Options -> Manage Search Engines) menu. Here, you’ll see 3 entry fields at the bottom. In the leftmost field enter the word ‘Techsource’ without quotes. In the adjacent field, enter the keyword Techsource or TS whatever you’re comfortable with. Then, in the rightmost field enter this link http://www.junauza.com/search?q= and you’re done! Now whenever you want to search TechSource, press Ctrl+L followed by the keyword (Techsource or TS) then Tab to search our site.

P.S: Whenever you visit a site and search its contents, the site gets added automatically to Chrome’s list of search engines. The above example is just to explain the process of adding sites as search engines.

8. Quickly access Downloads

Google Chrome’s download manager is somewhat different from the one that Firefox offers. Many users who are new to Chrome don’t like it at first as it doesn’t offer a separate window to manage downloads. However, Chrome does come with a dedicated download manager, which can be easily accessed by opening the Wrench menu and clicking on “Downloads”. The download manager will open in a new Tab, showing a list of currently running downloads as well as completed ones. The same menu can be accessed using the shortcut Ctrl+J.

9. Getting more out of back/forward buttons

The back/forward buttons are a standard offering when it comes to all web browsers. However, sometimes we may need to jump back/forward more than one step. Google Chrome allows a great way to view the previously visited 4-5 links for particular tab. All you have to do is right-click on the back/forward button and a list of recently visited pages will drop down. At the bottom, there will also be a link to your complete browsing History. The History menu can also be accessed using the shortcut Ctrl+H.

10. Quickly downloading images

This is another feature that is relatively unknown amongst many Chrome users. It is possible to download any image you find on Google Chrome by simply dragging and dropping onto the Desktop. The process is simple and saves some valuable time if you download images a lot.

Read More

30 Google Chrome tips, tricks and shortcuts

1. Create desktop and Start menu shortcuts to web apps such as Gmail - go to Gmail.com and then select Create application shortcuts... from the Page Control menu (in the top-right corner of your browser - it looks like a page with the corner folded over). Now choose where you want to place your shortcut. This works for other Google apps such as Calendar and Documents, and other services such as Windows Live Hotmail.

2. Control + Shift + N opens an 'incognito' window - sites you view in this window won't appear in your history and cookies served by sites in this window will be deleted when the window is closed.

3. You can open a link in an incognito window by right-clicking the link and selecting Open link in incognito window.

4. Alt + Home loads your Google Chrome home page, with thumbnails of your most visited sites shown in the active tabbed window.

5. Control + T opens a new tab. You can drag tabs around to change their order or drag a tab out of the window into its own window.

6. Control + Shift + T opens your most recently closed tab. Press the key combination again to open the tab closed before that one. Google Chrome remembers the last 10 tabs you've closed.

7. Jump to different open tabs using Control + 1, Control + 2, Control + 3, etc.Control + 9 takes you to the last tab.

8. Control + Tab lets you cycle through your open tabs in order.

9. Control + Shift + Tab cycles through your tabs in the opposite order.

10. As with Firefox 3, you can drag a link onto a tab to open it in that tab, or drop it between two tabs to open a new tab in that position.

11. To bookmark a site click the star on the left of the address bar and then select a folder to add it to.

12. Control +B hides the Google Chrome bookmarks bar. Press Control + Bto bring it back again.

13. Right-click or hold down the back button and you'll get a drop-down list of sites to go back through. Show Full History, at the bottom of the list, opens a new tab with your full browser history.

14. Control + H is a faster way to bring up the History page.

15. You can delete history for chosen days by scrolling to the day you want to delete and clicking Delete history for this day on the right-hand side of the window.

16. Control + J brings up your Downloads page.

17. To clear an item from your Downloads page, right-click an entry and select Remove.

18. Press Control + K or Control + E to search from the address bar. Once pressed, you'll see a ? symbol appear in the address bar and you can simply enter your search query and hit Return.

19. Right-click the top of the browser window and select Task manager to see how much memory different tabs and plug-ins are using. Highlight one and click End process to stop it running.

20. Shift + Escape is a quicker way to bring up the Google Chrome Task manager.

21. To see what plug-ins are installed, type about:plugins into the address window.

22. You can also type the following commands into the Google Chrome address window: about:stats, about:network, about:histograms,about:memory, about:cache, about:dns.

23. Type about:crash to see what a crashed tab looks like.

24. A three-second diversion: type about:internets. (Only works in Windows XP.)

25. Edit any web page - right-click a page and select Inspect element. Now edit the HTML source code and hit Return to view the changes.

26. To make Google Chrome your default browser, click the Tools button (in the right-hand corner of the browser window - a spanner icon). SelectOptions, click the Basics tab and then click the Make Google Chrome my default browser button.

27. To delete cookies, go to Tools > Options > Under the Hood. Scroll down to the Security section, and click Show cookies. Now you can click Remove all or remove individual cookies.

28. To clear more data such as the Google Chrome browsing history and cache, click the Tools icon and select Clear browsing data...

29. To clear the most visited web sites that appear on your Google Chrome start page, you must clear your browsing history using the method above.

30. Clearing your Google Chrome browser history will also stop matches from previously browsed sites appearing as suggestions in your address bar.

Read More