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.

The Search Box on The Toolbar – Even Better !

It was cool to have access to Google search from the toolbar of Firefox or Internet Explorer. For many, it saved few mouse clicks each time they wanted to do an online search.

But with Google Chrome, they took things to the next level. The addressbar itself became Google Search Box (and more) and was renamed as “Omnibox”.

So when you are on, just type in to your addressbar to do a Google search. Yes, with all those search operatives like filetype: or site: etc. Instant search also works here ! .

Suggestions instead of error pages

Like the Toolbar, Google Chrome shows you intelligent page suggestions when the page you’re trying to open can’t be found. Learn more about suggestions for navigation errors.

Highlighted Search Terms – Not Really

Toolbar has an option to highlight search terms on the page you visit from Google search results. This feature is not fully available on Chrome. However, you can use the find bar to highlight words on a page. Just hit Ctrl + F Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS) and command-F (Mac) and it will give you the “find bar”  Type in the word or words you are looking for, and it will hi-light them on the page.

AutoFill – It’s Built In

Autfill is built in to the Chrome Browser (and Chrome OS). It is getting better and better with updates from the team and is more smarter than the one you are using on toolbar now. So, don’t worry about this one, Chrome got you covered.

Visit chrome://settings/autofill to play with this feature on Chrome. Click to read more about AutoFill in Google Chrome.

Pop-up blocker – Yes Yes !

This is one of the basic things for any browser these days and Chrome got this just right. You have the popup blocked built in to Chrome and you get to control it from settings. Visit chrome://settings/contentExceptions#popups to tune this item. Read blocking pop-ups in Google Chrome.

Spell-checker – Yes, We Got That !

Yes, Chrome has an inbuilt spell checker with it. Good thing you asked, I know this is something we can’t live without, if you are like me. Read more about Google Chrome’s spell-checker.

You can enable/disable this feature here chrome://settings/languages ( look at the bottom of that page )

Translate – Yes, Built In, Again !

Translate doesn’t request any plugin/extension in Chrome. It is part of the browser. When you visit a web page on a different language than your primary language set, Chrome offers to translate the entire page for you.

If you want to turn off this feature, visit chrome://settings/advanced and look for “Translate”

Sidewiki – Do You Use This?

I do not know how many of you use this feature on the Toolbar, but in case you are one among that group, you can install the Sidewiki extension for Chrome from here.

Google Page Rank – Well, Get This Extension.

This feature is not built in to Chrome. Not everyone wants to know page rank of every web page they visit, right ? If you are someone who rely on the toolbar for this, install this extension.

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\

Windows 8

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?  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 Thingâ„¢ 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.

Here is a  video tutorial on how to type unicode UTF8 characters on a Chromebook. You can do it with a keyboard shortcut and then entering the code for the character, or with an extension. Here is the video.

Keyboard Shortcut Get Codes for Unicode characters – control-shift-U (release the use and the enter the HEX code.
Here is the list of codes for UTF characters  

Install UTF 8 Extension here.

via  awslutsky

Google has been working on Web Intents for Chrome for  a while now. I had to do some reading to get the whole concept of Web Intents. I will include few pieces here to get you all started.

Ever used “Share” option in Android? Noticed how any new app you install show up in that list? How is it possible for all these applications to work together, or say interconnected in one way?

Answer is intents

Here is the deal. When you create an app, it can register its intention to be able to handle a request for a user. In other words, you are opting in to show up in that list for users to select from, when they hit ‘share” on something, or a similar action. Now, here is the official explanation

Users use many different services on the web to handle their day to day tasks, such as sharing images, editing documents and listening to music. They expect their applications to be connected and to work together seamlessly.

It is impossible for developers to anticipate every new service and to integrate with every existing external service that their users prefer, and thus they must choose to integrate with a few select APIs at great expense to the developer.

Web Intents solves this. Web Intents is a framework for client-side service discovery and inter-application communication. Services register their intention to be able to handle an action on the user’s behalf. Applications request to start an Action of a certain verb (share, edit, view, pick etc.) and the system will find the appropriate Services for the user to use based on the user’s preference.

Google wants to bring this to Chrome or say browsers in general.

Consider an online photo storage site run by a cash-strapped startup: the developers don’t have the resources to add image editing abilities to their app, but they feel the site won’t be a hit without it. The Web Intent system will make it easy for them to offer this with little effort.

See where are headed with this thing? It sounds like an interesting concept for users and will make Developers’ life better!

How To Enable Web Intents

Update: This is available on the latest Dev version.

As of now, this is available only on Chromium nightly builds. We will soon see this on Chrome Dev builds and then stable releases. Hopefully, we will have extensions and apps utilizing this feature by that time.

Visit chrome://chrome/settings.
Select “”Allow Web Intents to enable me to connect my applications”" and that’s it!!

Testing – Examples

http://demos.webintents.org/ has some examples you can play with. Twitter, Instapaper and URL Shortner and some more for you to experiment.

I was helping a friend here at work and I had to open his browser. I fired up Google Chrome and was like …. OMG!!! this is very oooold version of Chrome, with its blue interface…….

But, why is he using Chrome v.6 when there is an auto updater for Chrome keeping everyone on the latest version? Uh, he is inside our corporate network and the auto update is disabled. I’ve been using an alternate method to keep my Chrome up-to-date on my work PC.

So, that’s the method I want to share with you today. It is nothing but downloading a complete set up file for offline installation. How is this different from the normal Chrome installation? I’ll tell you.

Chrome Offline File

When you download Chrome using the normal link, it downloads a small file and then when you run that, that little program downloads rest of the stuff you need and completes the installation. When your network is blocking this download, you need the complete file for your computer to installation to take place, otherwise, it will get stuck half way.

You will need the complete set up file if you are installing Chrome without an internet connection. You can download this the file from the link I am going to share here to download Chrome on a different computer, copy it to the one where you need it installed without internet connection.

Links To Download Complete Offline Installer 2012

I’ve got two links to share today. Both are for Windows users. It will work on Windows Xp, Vista and 7. First one “Alternate installer for one user account ” This file will install Google Chrome only for the current user. (If someone else, say your family or partner, using a different login ID, they won’t even see Chrome)

Second one : Alternate installer for all user accounts downloads a file which will install Chrome on a system level. Which means, every user on the computer will get their own installations of Google Chrome.

Updating Existing Installation With Offline Installer

It is possible to update or upgrade your current Google Chrome installation to the latest version using this method.

1. First, download the file of your choice.
2. Close Google Chrome.
3. Run the Setup file.
4. Open Chrome when completed.
5. Check the version of Chrome now (from settings wrench menu, click “about chrome”)
6. Follow this method each time there is an update to Chrome

Hope you learned something useful today. Please let me know if you have any comments/suggestions/questions. If you use Google plus, give me a plus one!!

Adding new users to Chrome lets you keep everyone’s Chrome stuff separate on the same computer. Just go to “Options” (“Preferences” on a Mac), click “Personal Stuff”, and click “Add New User”.

Have fun!

Early morning here and I found this brilliant Chrome tip on Google Plus, a good way to start the day. There is no wonder this tip was invented while using Google Plus, the long never ending stream of posts makes it tough  to browse through and go back to the top of the page.

The trick here is to add a small link (not exactly a link! … just a piece of code) to the bookmarks bar of Chrome and use that to  come back to the top the page that you are browsing, easy, on click.

How to Do This

Right click on your bookmarks bar ( if its not showing now, press CTRL+SHIFT+B)

Select “Add Page”. Give a name for your link ( I gave “back to top” you are free to leave it blank too if you like it that way!)

In “URL” field, paste the following code  javascript:window.scrollTo(0,0);

Click “Ok” and you are good to go!! Scroll down to the bottom of a page and try clicking this link.

Thanks to Tony Ruscoe  for this awesome tip!

A recent stable release of Google Chrome pushed “multiple profiles” to your favorite browser. Did you get to set a name and icon to your current browsing profile?

If not, here is an easy way to do it. Let me give that to you first! Open up  chrome://settings/manageProfile#0  on your addressbar and you will reach right there! Edit your profile name and choose  a new profile image!

Alternate Methods

If this is the easiest way, what are the other methods to get this done? There are two (let me know if you find more!). First, go to options menu, and click on “Personal Stuff” and now, click on your current profile (it will read “current” next to it) and then click “edit” right below that, and you are there!

Next option is, if there is a profile icon showing up on the top left corner of your Google Chrome window, click on it, and keep the mouse on the current profile name and you will see “edit” link there too.

Hope you found this useful! Please ask any questions in the comments section below.

Here is a very easy how to tip that you usually use an extension for. Changing user agent on Chrome, never knew that its this easy!!. Here is a video tutorial. You may want to watch this on full screen mode.

Yes, it’s built in!!! thanks François Beaufort