Tips, Hacks And Tweaks to Optimize Google Chrome

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// Google Chrome is the browser which combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer and easier. Time to time, I used several browsers like Internet Explore, Mozilla, Opera, FireFox and at last Google Chrome. Google Chrome offers a great no of flexibility such as searching form the address bar, thumbnails of the top sites, private browsing through incognito window. If you think all these things all together, then you also understand that Google Chrome is the best for all these types of issues and flexibilities. In this page, I want to describe some of the greatest tips, hacks and tweaks of Google Chrome. By following these tips, hacks and tweaks, you can browse privately, can open the recent closed tabs, can search through Google or Yahoo or other search engine, can set browser’s home page, can increase text space, can jump different tabs, can clean browsing history according to you own wish, can download, can bookmark, can jump the history page, can edit the web pages, can create the application shortcuts, can find out the installed plug-ins and can know many shortcuts also etc. So, just keep reading and know some of the best tips, hacks and tweaks …

Incognito window of Google Chrome

Using incognito window

Incognito window offers you to surf on a PC without leaving behind any digital footprints. If you use it, all of your surfing will be hidden and no one can trace your surfing to Internet world. To open and use incognito window, use Ctrl + Shift + N keys all together and use incognito window of Google Chrome.

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Link opening in incognito window

You can open any link in an incognito window. For this you have to right-click the link and select Open link in incognito window.

Opening recent browser tabs

Sometimes you may mistakenly close your browser tab during browsing time. But don’t worry. By using Ctrl + Shift + T all together, you can easily open the recent browser tabs again and can find your recent pages.

Custom search through Google Chrome

Default search of Google Chrome is Google. But you can change or edit the search options. For changing default search engine through other search engine like yahoo, AOL, ask etc. or any other things, just right click inside the address bar and select Edit search engines… From these lists, select anyone for your default search engine. After doing all of these, write your own thing in the address bar and hit enter and you will be directed to the search page.

Loading Chorme’s home page

By using Alt + Home all together you can load Google Chrome home page. This also enables thumbnails of your most visited sites shown in the active tabbed window.

Increasing space in a text area

You can easily increase more space in a textarea or re-size the text area by dragging the lower right corner of the text area.

Jumping to different opened tabs

You can switch the currently opened tabs by using Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + 2, Ctrl + 3 … Ctrl + 9. Ctrl + 1 means the first tab, Ctrl+2 means the second tab and so on. Ctrl+9 takes you to the last tab. In this way, you can easily switch the tabs easily.

Clear browsing data window

Clearing history

Click on Customize and control Google Chrome (it is at the top right corner of your browser window) and select Clear browsing data to clean the history according to your own wish.

Bringing up history page

To bring the history page quickly, use Ctrl + H. Here, you can easily view the group-wise history. You may also erase the history also.

Jumping the Downloads page

By pressing Ctrl + J, you can jump to the Download page.

Flexibility of downloading and saving

By using Google Chrome, you can easily download files and you can easily copy that to the desktop or to any other specific folder by using drag and drop directly.

Bookmarks enabling and hiding

By using Ctrl+B, you can easily enable Chrome’s bookmarks bar. If you press Ctrl+B again, the bookmark bar will be automatically disabled.

Easy bookmarking

You can easily bookmark a site by clicking the star icon at the left of the address bar. Now, select a folder to add it to or arrange and save your bookmark according to your own wish.

Loading Chrome’s home page and most visited pages

You can load Google Chrome’s home page, including the thumbnails of mostly visited sites by pressing Alt + Home.

Viewing installed plug-ins

Different purposes, you download and install several types of plugins. To see what plugins are installed on your computer, just type about:plugins into the address window.Now you will see all the installed plugins in shortly.

Creating application shortcuts

At the top right corner, there is an option named as Control the current page. Click on it and there is an option named as Create application shortcuts… Now, decide where you want to place the desired shortcut. This option works for Google apps, Google Calendar, Documents, Windows live hotmail etc.

Web page editing

To edit any web page just right-click a page and select inspect element. Then you can edit HTML source code and hit Enter key to view the changes.

Math calculations and unit conversions

You can use Google calculator by typing the expressions in the Google Chrome’s omnibox or address bar. Moreover, you can convert one unit to other unit easily by following the above ways.

Link dragging & dropping to open a new tab

You can drag a link onto a tab to open it in that tab. Or drop the link in between the two tabs to open a new tab in that position.

Switching different opened tabs

For jumping or switching to different open tabs, use Control + 1, Control + 2, Control + 3, etc. Control + 9 takes you to the last tab.

Cycling through opened tabs

This is a great option of Chrome. By using Control + Tab, lets you cycle through your open tabs in order. Really, it’s a handy way to switch different tabs in cycle order.

To cycle through your tabs in the opposite order, use Control + Shift + Tab.

Cleaning an item form the downloading page

To clear an item from  Downloads page, just right-click an entry or the entry you want to remove and select Remove. That’s al to clean an item from the downloading page.

Deleting cookies

You can easily cookies form the browser. To delete cookies, go to Tools > Options > Under the Hood. Now, scroll down to the Security section, and click Show cookies.Later you can click Remove all or remove individual cookies.

Default browsing page settings

For making Google Chrome as default browser, click the Tools button. Then select Options, click the Basics tab and then click the Make Google Chrome my default browser button.And thats’s all to open a CD.

Editing web page

To edit any web page or pages – right-click a page. Now select Inspect element icon. Now edit the HTML source code and hit Return to view the changes.

Google Chrome Task manager.

Shift + Esc is a quicker way to bring up the Google Chrome Task manager. So, use Shift + Esc to access there.

Easter egg of Google

If your computer’s operating system is Windows XP and if you type about:internets in your Google Chrome’s address bar, you will see a tribute to United States Senator Ted Stevens take on the Internet.

Web Based Malware And Browser Catch Rate

The study shows IE8 and it’s new SmartScreen filter head and shoulders above all other browsers. “Socially engineered malware,” as they put it, is arguably the most important form of malware these days. We’ve reported on it many times in the last year. The basic idea is that the user is enticed into visiting a web site and downloading malware believing it to be something else. The study was funded by Microsoft but the methodology was designed and the tests executed by NSS Labs.

The recent generation of web browsers has approached this problem with reputation services, just as they have with phishing. Just as phishing sites are often initially blocked by browsers (“…this is a reported phishing web site”) based partly on blacklists of domains and IP addresses, so are malware sites being blocked.

NSS Labs’ tests came up with these results overall:

Browser	Malware Catch Rate
IE8 (RC1)	69%
Firefox 3.07	30%
Safari v3	24%
Chrome 1.0.154	16%
Opera 9.84	5%
IE7	4%

Results like these can change over time as companies change priorities and find new sources of reputation data. It’s clear, for example, that Opera and Microsoft with IE7 aren’t even trying very hard to find malware. It’s also true that tests for phishing sites could find very different results. In fact, phishing is all those two browsers may be looking for, and they may find what malware they find by sheer coincidence. Finally, it’s likely that Microsoft was interested in such testing because they had been working hard on improving detection of such sites.

The other important take-away from this is that even the best numbers from IE8 are low. Protection such as this is a good defense-in-depth measure, but it’s no substitute for a good anti-malware program and other protections, such as least-privileged access.

Google updates the Chrome browser

The Google Chrome browser has been updated to fix a vulnerability, which could have resulted in a “severe” attack.

Google Chrome was updated to version 1.0.154.59, fixing an error that could have allowed cross-site scripting attacks without the user doing anything, under certain conditions.

This followed an IBM security advisory, which said that three separate issues in various parts of Google Chrome could make an attacker craft the “powerful” attacks.

Chrome users should receive the update automatically, but will also see an ‘update’ button in the browser.

Google Chrome received its last large major update back in March, while IT PRO blogger Davey Winder revealed how the browser survived the PWN2OWN hacking competition.

• Related post’s : Google Releases new version 1.0.154.159 for Chrome

Google Releases new version 1.0.154.159 for Chrome

Google comes up with a new version release for its Chrome Browser to fix a high security problem flaw detected with its last version.

The problems affected the Google mainstream version which was stable for quite some time before the new version 1.0.154.159. The update has been done automatically without user intervention and Google itself has built the Chrome.

The security problem, which was made into notice on April 8 by Roi Saltzman of the IBM Rational Application Security Research Group, the spoof allowed cross-site scripting attacks. This short of flaw can make a Web browser process unauthorized code such as JavaScript, enabling a variety of attacks, including impersonation or phishing.

An error in handling URLs with a chromehtml: protocol could allow an attacker to run scripts of his choosing on any page or enumerate files on the local disk under certain conditions.

If a user has Google Chrome installed, visiting an attacker-controlled Web page in Internet Explorer could have caused Google Chrome to launch, open multiple tabs, and load scripts that run after navigating to a URL of the attacker’s choice. Such an attack only works if Chrome is not already running.

How to Remove GoogleUpdate.exe

Google Chrome, Google Lively, Google Earth, and an untold number of other Google applications may install an update mechanism named googleupdate.exe, googleupdater.exe, or something similar. The googleupdate may continually attempt to access the Internet without requesting permission and without providing an option to disable it. This behavior may persist even after the parent application has been removed. While there’s no single way to rid the system of googleupdate, the following tips provide the common install locations.

Here’s How:

1. Instead of removal, a permission-based firewall such as ZoneAlarm can be used to temporarily block Googleupdate. If desired, the steps below can be used to completely remove Googleupdate from the system. Before attempting any manual removal, it’s a good idea to backup your system and make a separate backup of the system registry. Also note that removing Googleupdate will impact the parent applications ability to download updates.

 

2. To locate instances of googleupdate, search all local fixed drives for googleupd or googleupd* (depending on the search utility, the * wildcard may be required. Note that it is not required for the Windows search feature in Windows Explorer).
3. Make copies of any files found, noting their original location. Depending on the OS, some or all of the following may be found:
   • Google Update (Task Scheduler Object)
   • Googleupdate.exe (Application) (two or more locations)
   • GoogleUpdateHelper.msi (Windows Installer Package)

 

4. You should be able to delete the Google Update Task Scheduler Object and the GoogleUpdateHelper.msi with no problem. However, to delete googleupdate.exe, you’ll first need to launch Task Manager, locate the running Google Update process, and stop it. After doing that, you should be able to delete Googleupdate.exe. In other cases, GoogleUpdate may be installed as a service, in which case you will need to first stop the service before attempting to delete the file.

 

5. Next, open the Registry Editor and browse to the following subkey:
   HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\

 

6. In the right pane, locate the value named “Google Update“, right-click the name and select Delete. Click Yes to confirm the deletion. When finished, close the Registry Editor.

 

7. After following the above steps, reboot the system.

Google Chrome Not Prefetching Pages

Google Chrome doesn’t actually prefetch webpages. Instead, it simply resolves the IP address to the domain name in advance. Should the page then be requested, the path to that page is already known so the page appears to load faster – even seconds faster, according to Google Chromium Developer Jim Roskind who explained the distinction in his comment to the original post. The good news – no need to disable DNS prefetching in Google Chrome. And faster surfing.

Google’s Chrome : Need To Polish

Less than a day out, and already frustrated users are posting about the Googleupdate “virus” which continually tries to gain Internet access even if Chrome itself isn’t active. (And allegedly even after Chrome has been uninstalled). For removal tips, see “How to Remove GoogleUpdate.exe“.

Other complaints about Google Chrome include a surprising inability to view YouTube movies (surprising because Google owns YouTube). The same videos run fine in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera, but when attempted via Google Chrome, it either displays the message “”We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” or it tells you the Adobe Flash Movie Plugin is not installed.
Equally perplexing, the Terms of Service for Chrome are a bit confusing when it comes to intellectual property rights. Initially it seems reassuring with this disclaimer:

“Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist).”

But the referenced Section 11 states:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.”
According to Google Chromium Developer Jim Roskind, Google Chrome isn’t pre-fetching pages, but rather simply pre-resolving the IP address for the anticipated page request. For details, see: Google Chrome Not Prefetching Pages. (Note that this correction doesn’t apply to Firefox, which prefetches the first page of Google search results. To disable Firefox prefetch, see: How to Disable Google Pre-Fetching in Firefox).

Google Chrome : 10 Questions will Decide the way

After the launch of Google Chrome the scenario has been changed . Now it all leaves me with about a gazillion questions. Here, for starters, are ten of them:

1. Will Google stop promoting Firefox? It’s been known to use the Google homepage to tell IE users they should be running Firefox, and it distributes a version of Firefox with the Google Toolbar built in. You gotta think that it’ll redeploy some or all of its Firefox-boosting energies to drumming up interest in Chrome.

2. Will Mozilla decide Google is an enemy, not a friend? Probably not–as Kara notes, the companies recently extended the relationship that makes puts Google into Firefox as its default search engine until 2011. That deal makes Mozilla millions of dollars a year, which is presumably enough to make Google at worst a frenemy of Mozilla. It’s hard–although not impossible–to imagine Mozilla being so ticked off by Google launching a browser that it takes its search business to someone else, such as Yahoo.

3. Did Google tell Mozilla it was working on a browser? Out of courtesy, or to ensure that the Firefox deal, which makes millions for Google as well as for Mozilla, emerged unscathed? Or did Mozilla renew the partnership not knowing that Google was planning to become a competitor? In the great scheme of things, it’s no surprise that Google might want to build a browser, but conventional wisdom would likely have involved it being based on Mozilla, not Webkit.

4. Just how hard will Google push Chrome on the Google homepage? Like no other company on earth, Google has an opportunity to get hundreds of millions of people using its browser in a relatively short amount of time. You gotta think that it’ll use the Google homepage to drum up interest. But will it check to see if you’re using IE, Firefox, or another browser and attempt to convince you to switch?

5. Will Google try to convert Google Toolbar users into Chrome users? Toolbar is presumably Google’s most widely-used piece of software at the moment, and it seems inevitable that Google will want to let users know about Chrome. But will it, say, try to bundle Chrome into the Toolbar download from now on? Apple discovered that bundling is dangerous when it caught flack for distributing Safari for Windows via the iTunes updater.

6. How deeply will Chrome be integrated with other Google projects? It’ll include Gears. Will it tie into Google Maps and Google Print and Google Desktop and the 18,432,922 other Google projects in ways that a non-Google browser wouldn’t?

7. Or to put that last question another way, will Google services work better in Chrome than other browsers? A conspiracy theorist could easily come up with scenarios in which Google starts to tie together its offerings in ways that resemble the tactics that Microsoft used in the 1990s to drive IE adoption and discourage use of Netscape. Google is too smart and too well intentioned to go down that route in the same way, I’m sure. But even a company with good intentions might do things that reasonable people (or even the courts think are anti-competitive.

8. Just how popular could Chrome get? Can it get to ten percent marketshare? Twenty? Forty? Ninety? Firefox has shown that it’s possible for a good new browser to gain plenty of traction, and Chrome will have advantages that even Firefox doesn’t have in terms of distribution.

9. Who will it steal users from? Kara says that Chrome is at least a part a response to Google concerns that IE 8 may be bad for Google’s search-and-advertising business. So the company would presumably be pleased if IE users jump ship for Chrome. But if you can divide the world into folks who will switch to a better browser and those who won’t, a high percentage of the former group has likely already moved to Firefox. You can imagine a scenario in which the arrival of Chrome results in Firefox’s market share gains stalling. Or even in Firefox use eroding.

10. Will Chrome stay on the desktop? Google sees its future as being highly mobile, as witness its work on Android and all the work it’s put into making services like Gmail and Google Maps work well on iPhone, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and other mobile platforms. Will we see Chrome on phones?

I could go on–but for now, I’ll stop my pondering. Your speculation and additional questions would be welcome. And needless to say, I can’t wait to try Chrome, assuming that it’s real and imminent…

Google Chrome is now Much Safe

Okay, maybe safe is the wrong word, but at least if you use it to write a blog or post content, you are no longer giving all rights to that content over to Google in perpetuity.

They have changed their terms of service and it’s retroactive to anyone who’s already downloaded the software. Now it says:

11. Content license from you

• 11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Short, and to the point.

Google Chrome : Ready to lock horn with Internet Explorer

Google Chrome

Download Google Chrome

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
here’s what the comic announces Google Chrome to be:

• Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.
• The browser will include a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the web today. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager, “placing blame where blame belongs.”
• Google Chrome will use special tabs. Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.

  

• The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more. The omnibox (“omni” is a prefix meaning “all”, as in “omniscient” – “all-knowing”) also lets you enter e.g. “digital camera” if the title of the page you visited was “Canon Digital Camera”. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box; you need to type the site’s name into the address bar, like “amazon”, and then hit the tab key and enter your search keywords.
• As a default homepage Chrome presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera. On that page you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. To the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs.

  

• Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” The latest version of Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate. Google’s use-case for when you might want to use the “incognito” feature is e.g. to keep a surprise gift a secret. As far as Microsoft’s InPrivate mode is concerned, people also speculated it was a “porn mode.”
• Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar :- Mozilla has a project called Prism that aims to do similar (though doing so may train users into accepting non-URL windows as safe or into ignoring the URL, which could increase the effectiveness of phishing attacks).
• To fight malware and phishing attempts :- Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites. Google also promises that whatever runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed. Plugins the user installed may escape this security model, Google admits.

This looks like a very interesting project, and I think it can’t hurt to have more competition in the browser area. Google is playing this as nicely as possible by open-sourcing things, with perhaps part of the reason to try to defend against monopoly accusations – after all, Google already owns a lot of what’s happening inside the browser, andsome may feel owning a browser too could be a little too much power for a single company (Google could, for instance, release browser features that benefit their sites more than most other sites… as can Microsoft with Internet Explorer). For now, until Chrome is released in a testable version, how much of the speed, stability and user interface promises will be fullfilled – and how much of the interface you’ll be able to configure in case you don’t like it – remains to be seen.