In the pre-chrome era, the best way to make your browser more Google friendly was installing the Google Toolbar for Firefox or IE. But when Google launched their own browser, it changed everything.
Their love for a Google friendly browser made them switch to Chrome, but they were surprised to know that Google will not give them Google toolbar on their own browser.
Many went back to Firefox and IE, disappointed and feeling sorry for leaving their old friend behind, the lonely Google toolbar. No one told them that most of the Google toolbar features are built in to Chrome browser, and many others are available as extensions. Until now. Read on !
Many of the things are built in to Chrome browser and will not need any extension or tweaking. Say, your most visited websites thumbnails on the new tab page, its there by default. But a few of them require extensions (which are free btw) but they are rarely used features if you ask me.
Google Bookmarks
Google did not use Google Bookmarks as the base for their bookmarks on Chrome browser. Instead, they built something new called “Chrome Sync” which syncs more than just your bookmarks. Not everyone was happy with this. But you have an option to copy all your Google bookmarks to Chrome bookmarks.
1. Sign in to your Google Account by clicking Sign In on the Toolbar.
2. Click the down arrow next to the Bookmarks button.
3. Select Manage All.
4. Select the Tools menu in the uper right-hand corner.
5. Select Export as Bookmarks.
6. Save the file.
Importing to Google Chrome:
1. Click the Tools menu in Google Chrome.
2. Select Bookmark manager.
3. Click the Tools menu in the manager.
4. Select Import bookmarks.
5. Select the HTML file saved from the first step, then click Open.
So that’s how to you transfer your Googlebookmarks over to Chrome Bookmarks. But there is another workaround, if you want to keep it separate and just have them accessible easily, just add a bookmark for https://www.google.com/bookmarks to your Google Chrome bookmarks bar.
[click to continue…]
Chromesync is the most attractive feature on Chrome and we all love it. But what if you do not want to use it but still need to backup your bookmarks? Well, you can copy the “bookmarks” file from Chrome’s App data and backup it on Dropbox or a similar cloud service to get sync it elsewhere. Let me show you how.
The only thing involved here is navigating to the correct folder to find the “bookmarks” file to copy it. So, here is the location of this file on different operating systems.
Windows 7
C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default ( Replace the <USER> with your username. Here is the easiest way. Open up explorer and paste this on the addressbar after altering the username to show yours.
This directly takes you to the folder for the default user. Navigate to other folders if you need to copy bookmarks from other profiles.
Open the following
Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\
C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default  (same as Windows 7)
Ubuntu
.config/google-chrome/Default/Bookmarks
Apple Mac OSX -
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
Let me know if you got any questions!
Ever noticed Chrome connecting to three random domains at startup? Well, I missed that so far, but when I read about it, I was curious to know why. Are you? Â When you start Chrome, it attempts to connect to three random domains like http://aghepodlln/ or http://lkhjasdnpr/
The simple answer to “why” is, it is checking if your ISP redirects your entries to the addressbar to their custom search page if the text you entered is not a complete website address.
I got this detailed answer from Mike West’s blog.
The goal of the requests is to determine if you’re currently on a network that intercepts and redirects requests for nonexistent hostnames. For example, it’s not at all uncommon for ISP to transparently redirect failed DNS lookups in order to convert requests like http://text/into requests for http://your.helpful.isp/search?q=text. Leaving aside a discussion of the rightness or wrongness of these “helpful†activities, this behavior causes problems for Chrome. Specifically, it breaks some heuristics the Omnibox uses to determine whether a user means to search for a specific term, or to visit a non-standard domain name.
Google’s internal network is a good example of how this can cause problems. Internally, a short-link service named “go†makes sharing memorable links straightforward. If I type “go†in Chrome’s Omnibox and hit enter, it’s not exactly clear whether I mean to visit http://go/or to search for “Go†(which is an interesting programming language, by the way). Chrome does its best to do The Right Thing™ in response to this sort of user input by executing a search, and then, in the background, executing a HEAD request for the potential domain. If the server responds, Chrome will display an infobar, asking if you meant to navigate tohttp://go/, and it will remember your response for future reference.
Read his blog entry for the full technical explanation for this.