Black Menu – A Compact Google Dashboard For You
How many Google services do you use?
I use many. I am sure there are others who use a lot more of Google’s services. Unfortunately there is no central place for you to manage all these services from.
Yes, there is an official Google Dashboard, but that has more of a configuration tool. So, we need a place where you can access and manage Google services.
Enter Black Menu by Carlos Jeurissen
Black Menu gives you a compact dashboard, just one click away from your Google Chrome toolbar, to manage all Google services you use. My personal favorite was the way Google Calender and Google tasks appears. For some reason, Google Tasks is being ignored by Google, but I use it on a daily basis. I don’t know how many of you do. Any other Google Tasks fan here?
Features or Menus
Let’s take a look at couple of the features/menus of this Extension now.
Search Menu: Does the basic job of Google Search for you. Well, why do you need a search menu when you have the all powerful Omnibar?
Take Omnibar for your basic search needs. But if you need to something like, search some chicken recipes, a cafe in local search, how do you do it?
Here is what I do.
- First option is to search “recipe chicken” and then from results, navigate to Google Recipe search. Same with local search.
- Second option is to search Google Recipe search first,open Google Recipe search box and then type my query.
With the Google search menu included in this extension, I can type Chicken and click Recipe and a new tab opens with Google Recipe search for Chicken.
Helpful, I say.
Google+ Menu: A searchbox with different search types like search for posts, people, events and more! Saves you a few mouse clicks each time you want to access some Google+ feature. Time server, what do you think?
So, that’s just for sample! You will see a lot more possibilities with each menu added to this extension.
Feature Requests
I liked this extension, I am sure anyone who uses a lot of Google services/products will do. What I need next is some options to configure the extension the way I want. Things like, change the order of the services, to move my favorites up and down.
Then, it will be cool to make the search menu work within the extension too. Say, I want to go to Devices under Google Play. I should be able to type Devices or Google Play Devices and just like my android search, the Devices section should come up in real time.
I dont know how tough/easy it is, to code up. But, I am sure these features will make this extension better!
Install this extension from here.
One Response to “Black Menu – A Compact Google Dashboard For You”
That looked like an awesome awesome extension, I have installed it. But now I see how it works, it isnt just that cool. Almost every google service in the extension is a search bar and opens a new tab to search. Ctrl + T and search works just faster and easier. The right google service will pop up at the top of the search results anyway.
The calendar/google tasks tab is indeed the best part, just because it works completely within the extension. With gmail for example, it would be cool to acces your mails directly. Showing and sending emails within the extension, now it is mostly a link service and that isnt just that productive.
Keep up the good work with interesting extensions, you always find those