Google has just released a public beta version of Google Chrome for Android. Google’s main goal was to port the speed and simplicity of the Chrome browser to mobile devices running on Android. The beta version is only available for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich devices, and currently only in the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil.

Android users can download Chrome Beta from Android Market, where it is available for download. A version of the browser has also been downloaded and made available again by members of the XDA-Developer forum.

Chrome for Android Beta ships with some Chrome desktop features, including the browser’s omnibox to search and navigate directly from the browser’s address bar, a tab driven interface, and the private browsing mode (incognito mode). Other features of the desktop version, like themes and extensions support are currently not available in the beta client.

I have made the full switch to listening exclusively to Internet Radio stations many years ago. The core reasons? Accessibility while working on the PC, less ads and talking while songs are playing, and better recording possibilities (see our StreamWriter review for an excellent program that can be used for that purpose.

I usually use desktop media players like AIMP3 to listen to Internet Radio stations, as it is a lot more comfortable than having to keep a streaming page open all the time in the web browser. That’s especially true if you have to restart the browser every now and then.

Radio Player Live is an excellent Chrome extension that offers a great radio listening experience for Chrome users. First time users need to add at least one station to the extension before they start accessing the selected stations via the extension’s Chrome address bar button.

This is done on the extension’s page. A click on Add radio stations lists all the available options. Users can add a station from the gallery listing maintained by the extension developers, add stations from popular sites such as the Shoutcast directory or Digitally Imported, or add stations manually.

All stations from the gallery can be added with a single click of the mouse button. They list many terrestrial stations, like RTL and RTL2, Virgin Radio, BBC 1 to BBC 6 or .977.

Third party stations lead to websites from where the stations need to be added. The extension adds buttons next to each station on those sites which can be used to add the selected radio station to the extension.

A click on the Radio Player Live button loads an overlay prompt to add the selected station to the radio player. The station’s name, website, logo and category can be customized here.

The station can then be selected via the extension’s button in the Chrome interface. Stations can be sorted into categories for easier identification. You can do that when you add a station, or later on under Manage my stations in the program options.

Users who do not like the theme can modify it extensively in the options. From background and header text colors to borders, category names and srollbars. Nearly every visual aspect can be modified.

The player window itself displays a list of radio stations, the currently playing station, the volume, and pause and stop options. You can switch to another radio station with a click.

The program supports VLC and Windows Media Player plugins, but I was not able to get those to work in the Chrome browser. It is not clear from the description whether they are used to play the radio stations in the browser, or if the music is redirected to the desktop player from where they are then played.

Google Chrome users who like to listen to Internet radio while surfing should take a closer look at Radio Player Live.

When you look at the extensions that you have installed in your Chrome browser, you will probably notice that you do not use all of them all the time. It is more likely that you have extensions installed for specific tasks, for instance work, entertainment, research or shopping. And even though you do not use them all of the time, all of them are running in the background whenever the web browser is open. This seems like a waste of resources, and maybe even space, considering that many extensions like to place icons into Chrome’s address bar.

Context is a useful extension that allows you to group extensions and enable or disable those groups at will. All you need to do to get started after installation is to open the options of the extensions and start adding new contexts (aka groups). You are asked to select a name and icon for the context for identification purposes. The extension displays 14 different icons that you can select for your groups.

Once created, you can start dragging and dropping extension into those groups. Context by default will only display extensions in the options that you can move into groups. You can enable apps support under additional options to group applications as well.

Click the Save button once you are done. You can from that moment on click on the Context menu button to select one of the extension groups that you want to work with. Switching between groups, or enabling all extensions, works without a restart of the browser. Keep in mind though that extensions that you have not added to any groups are not available when you activate individual groups. They become only available if you enable the all extensions option. Only the extensions and apps that you have added to that particular group are then enabled in the browser, with everything else disabled.

Context will display a notification at the bottom whenever you install a new app or extension. You can use it to move the program into one of the available groups.

The core benefits should be obvious. You first save browser resources by reducing the number of extensions that are running in the background. You second save screen estate and increase the visibility by removing extension icons from the address bar that you do not need to work with right now.

Google Chrome users can download the useful extension from the official Chrome Web Store.

You may sometimes be in a position where you need to look up information but do not have Internet available at the moment. This can be during your daily commute or in a situation where an Internet connection is not available or working. We have reviewed several options in the past to get the majority of Wikipedia contents on your system locally to access the information without the need for an Internet connection. Check out WikiTaxi, OkaWix or Wikipedia School DVDs if you are interested in those methods.

The latest option has been exclusively designed for the Google Chrome web browser and therefor also Google’s Chromebook. The web application allows you to download nearly all textual contents from Wikipedia to make them available directly in the Chrome browser.

You are asked to either pick a 13 Megabyte dump of the most popular Wikipedia articles or the big database which weights in at about 1 Gigabyte. You can also select one of four available parsers which turn the Wikipedia information into HTML contents that are readable in the web browser.

Especially the large download make take a while, and you also need to make sure that you have enough disk space available for it.

Once installed you can use the following page to access your Wikipedia information offline in the Chrome browser. The developer suggests to bookmark the page for fast access.

It offers a search option, access to the program settings, access to the article index and an option to load a random article from the repository.

The search supports suggestions which are displayed automatically once you start typing in the first letter of your search term.

The articles are complete with the exception of media and the footnotes which are not displayed at all.

Search results are displayed almost instantly on modern computer systems.

Chrome users who would like their own personal Wikipedia copy on their computer can download and install the web app from the official Chrome web store. (via Chromestory)

Making sure that you are connected via SSL is one of the most important things Internet users can do to improve their security online. This is especially true on public computer networks, like those on airports, Internet cafes or on campus. Why? Because it is otherwise dead easy to wiretap the traffic that you send and receive on the network. And while that may not be an issue for some activities online, you better be sure when you sign into accounts or handle financial transactions on sites such as PayPal or your bank’s online presence.

KB SSL Enforcer is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to enforce SSL encryption on websites and services that support it. If it detects that a site is offering both http and https connections, it will automatically connect the user to the more secure https connection to improve online security.

The extension handles the detection and switching to SSL automatically. The concept is very similar to HTTPS Everywhere for the Firefox web browser, with the difference that HTTPS Everywhere only enforces SSL on sites in its database (with options to create your own rule sets).

The extension maintains a list of sites supporting SSL that you have accessed in the cache to speed up future connections.

You may however come upon sites sometimes that do not work properly when connecting to them via https. A blacklist is provided that will block the automatic redirection to https for listed sites. Open the settings of SSL Enforcer by loading the following url in the web browser (chrome://settings/extensions) and clicking on the Options link next to the extension.

The extension handles domains with and without www differently. You can change that in the options so that rules defined for a site apply to both versions.

You can also add sites to a whitelist, which you may need to do if the automatic detection does not discover if a domain supports SSL connections.

Google Chrome users can download SSL Enforcer from the official Chrome web store.

You don’t always have the time to sit in front of your laptop or desktop computer and read lengthy material. Google Chrome, which is a fantastic browser in so many ways, brings yet another extension to the Google Chrome features. This extension is called dotEPUB and it enables you to take the text from a website and generate an eBook in the file format .epub. This means that you can simply click an icon and get a named download in the form of readable text by using this extension. This can then be read on your desktop computer or mobile devices when it is more convenient. With this extension, there is no need to bookmark the page and try to find it again later. The URL is included in the file if you need to find the original source again in the future.

Install the dotEPUB Chrome Extension and it will instantly manifest as an icon that looks like a green traffic light in the upper right pane of your Google Chrome browser window.

Here it was highlighted in yellow, but it is difficult to miss an added Chrome extension. When you are on a web page that has an interesting article or you have found a lengthy Wikipedia article, all you have to do is click this green dot icon and the entire webpage is converted into an e-book format that can be saved, converted and read at will. You can read it on your desktop or laptop or your iPhone or Android. It doesn’t matter what device you use, especially if you use a good conversion tool, which will be discussed shortly.

As many of you are familiar with, Google Chrome downloads files and then creates a tab for the recent downloads in the bottom pane of the screen. When you use dotEPUB, you will see that the text of the page you selected has been downloaded in the form of an .epub file. It is best to open the file location and move these files to a specific folder. Otherwise, you will be sorting through downloads later to find the file.

The new EPUB file will not be instantly readable unless you have software capable of reading .epub files and it is set as a default for such files. You need to have software that can read .epub files. Notebook will not do it, nor will any other text editor, unless you are in the mood to decrypt it. Here is a suggestion:

Try using Stanza, an excellent utility for not only reading .epub files, but also for converting them into formats that most devices can use. Normally, dotEPUB is available to move directly to several different mobile devices, but not the Amazon Kindle. Stanza allows you to read your saved text from dotEPUB and also export it in various formats, such as Kindle compatible formats.

Download Stanza for Windows and you will have the perfect freeware that will enable you to actually read the content you copied and saved. Use the File tab to convert to readable formats for eReader, HTML 4x, Amazon Kindle, etc. You can use Stanza as a reading tool on your desktop for all of the website texts you have saved using dotEPUB.

Though you don’t get the pictures with the text, you can still have the text. In a matter of five minutes, you can save extensive information from websites and save them for reading offline. The possibilities are numerous with this Google Chrome extension. Enjoy the information.

Many Google Chrome extensions add a button to the browser’s address toolbar. If you have installed more than a dozen or so extensions, you may notice that space can become a issue, especially if the majority of extensions has added a button to the address bar. While you can hide individual extension icons with a right-click and the selection of Hide Button from the menu, it is usually not something that you may want to do considering that you may use buttons eventually again.

You could also disable and enable extensions to hide and show their buttons, but that is also not overly comfortable.

The Google Chrome Extensions Manager provides a solution for this problem. It basically adds two-click options to the browser to manage extensions, apps and themes comfortable.

A click on the extension’s button displays all installed extensions, applications and themes. Each entry is listed with its name, version and description plus buttons to open the homepage, uninstall or open the options page. The checkbox finally is used to quickly enable or disable the extension, theme or app in the browser. Links at the top lead to specific sections, for instance to display all disabled or outdated add-ons, or to display all extensions, apps and themes regardless of their status in one list.

The core feature that the Extensions Manager provides is the ability to quickly enable or disable extensions, applications or themes in the browser. It takes two clicks, one on the extension icon and the second in the checkbox to enable or disable select extensions.

That’s more comfortable than using Chrome’s built-in extension manager or the right-click context menu to do the same (at least for re-enabling them after disabling).

Themes can also be switched with two clicks once the Chrome Extensions Manager add-on has been installed.

The extension furthermore allows you to keep track of updates which are displayed in the recent tab, and of outdated extensions which are displayed in the outdated tab.

The options of Extensions Manager offer additional customizations. Here it is for instance possible to start the display in a specific view mode, change the types of entries that appear under recent, or disable notifications when extensions are enabled or disabled.

Especially users with lots of installed themes, extensions or apps in the Chrome browser can benefit from Extensions Manager as it makes it easier to deal with installed browser add-ons.

Chrome users can download the extension from the official Chrome Web Store.

Many football fans use the Internet regularly to check for football scores, results, tables, fixtures and news. While it is easy to open the homepage of your favorite football club to read up on the latest news, you could also visit sport news portals like BBC Sport that cover all big European leagues and competitions.

Ultimate Football Results is an extension for the Google Chrome browser that brings football news to the web browser. The extension adds a single icon to the address bar of the browser upon installation. A click on that icon opens an overlay window with four information panels.

Each panel or frame can be configured individually to display the table, results or fixtures of a specific league or tournament. The extension supports all major and minor European leagues, from the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga to the Italian Series A, the Spanish Liga and the UEFA champions league and Europa League. It is all there.

Each frame can be configured individually to display table, results or fixtures for a specified league or tournament. Even better, a total of four tabs, each with four frames, can be configured in the options.

Football fans only interested in one league could for instance display all three in three different frames in the Home tab, add four European leagues under Europe, League One or Two in the Other tab and finally the FA cup, Champions League and European League under Knockout Cups.

First time users can configure the extension with a right-click on the icon and the selection of options. Here it is then possible to select a league or tournament and the type of news that should be displayed in the selected frame.

Some information that are presented in a frame can be clicked on. Game results for instance lead to game stats that list the goal scorers, bookings, match stats and links to text commentary of the game, the team list and the next result (that is the next game that has been played in that particular league or cup).

Ultimate Football Results is currently not including national teams, the World cup, Euro cup or any other cup that is played in the world with national teams. The extension lacks women football, non European leagues and lower divisions with the exception of League One and League Two. Adding those would certainly improve the extension further.

It sometimes takes a few seconds before the window is rendered and the results displayed. This can be a issue as there is no indication that news are loaded.

Google Chrome users can download and install Ultimate Football Results from the official Chrome Web Store.

Firefox users can try Footiefox which offers more leagues and countries, live notifications but less detailed information about each game.

Prerendering in the best case speeds up specific processes. When it comes to web browsers the technology could pre-load and render websites to display them faster for the user. This only works if the browser gets the site right. If you look at a standard web search for instance, you will get ten search results by default plus other pages that you could click on. It would be a tremendous waste of processing power and bandwidth if the browser would load all of those pages, especially if the user would only click on one page of the results.

The Google Chrome web browser, and Chromium as well, use prerendering in a limited way. It may be used when you enter a phrase into the Chrome address bar. But which page or pages do get prerendered when this is happening?

That’s easy to find out (thanks to François Beaufort who posted a short demonstration video on YouTube). All you need to do is to open the Google Chrome or Chromium Task Manager to see which pages get prerendered by the web browser.

You can open the Chrome Task Manager with a click on the Wrench icon, the selection of Tools and Task Manager. You can alternatively use the keyboard shortcut Shift-Esc to bring up the Task Manager directly.

Look for Prerender: entries in the Task Manager. The indicator is followed either by the site url that got prerendered or the page title. It may still take time to identify the prerendered link on the page as Google is not displaying the information in the web browser.

Prerendering in the web browser is automatically enabled. Users who do not want to use the feature can disable it the following way. Enter chrome://flags in the address bar and locate the “Prerender from omnibox” option.

Enables prerendering of suggestions from the Omnibox and predicts appropriate network actions (prerendering, Instant, DNS preconnect) by calculating a confidence value for each Omnibox result.

Switch to disabled in the pulldown menu to turn the feature off.

When you look at Google Chrome’s feature set and compare it to that of other browsers like Opera, Internet Explorer or Firefox, you will come to the conclusion that web browsers are more alike than they are different. Two items that will definitely be on the list are the built-in PDF viewer and the native Adobe Flash plugin. (Firefox may get a native pdf viewer in future versions)

Google Chrome users can open pdf documents directly in the browser. While the viewer is not comparable in functionality to desktop pdf readers, it is certainly enough to read a document online.

And native support for Adobe’s Flash technology ensures that Chrome users are automatically updated to the newest version whenever it is released, which improves overall security significantly.

Some Chrome users on the other hand may not want to use the native plugins of the Chrome browser. This can be the case if they have noticed that the Flash plugin is acting up or if they have installed a feature rich pdf reader on their system that they prefer to use.

Chrome, even with another Flash or PDF reader plugin installed, continues to use its native plugins for Flash and PDF contents (see Why are Two Flash Player Plugins Running In Google Chrome? for instance for an explanation).

Users of the Chrome web browser need to disable the native plugins before they can use third party plugins or software instead. This is done by entering chrome://plugins/ in the Chrome address bar and hitting enter.

The page that opens displays a list of all plug-ins currently installed in the Chrome browser. Relevant for this guide are the Flash and Chrome PDF Viewer plugins. A click on Disable below the Chrome PDF Viewer disables those capabilities in the browser.

In regard to Flash, it is a bit more complicated. It is necessary to click on Details first to display all installed Flash plugins in Chrome. Locate the Flash plugin that has its location in the Chrome application folder and click the disable link to disable it. Make sure another Flash plugin is still active if you want to use the technology on the Internet.

That’s how you disable both the native Flash plugin and the native pdf viewer in Google Chrome.

Are you using Google Chrome’s native plugins? Or did you notice issues using those plugins?

Tabbed web browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Internet Explorer have specific orders in which tabs are opened and closed. Developers have to configure orders for opening blank pages and links as well as activation rules when users close tabs. The default behavior of most browsers opens blank tabs on the rightmost side of the tabbar, links to the right of the active tab and activate the last used tab after closing a tab.

Some users may prefer a different order of things. Someone with one hundred or more open tabs would not necessarily want a blank tab opened at the rightmost location of the tabbar as it is easy to lose the orientation this way.

The Google Chrome extension Tab Position Customizer empowers the user to select the tab order. In particular it is possible to select the tab opening position, the new tab behavior and the behavior after closing a tab in the Google browser.

Here are the available options:

• Tab Opening Position: Always first, Always last, Right of the current tab, Left of the current tab, Chrome default
• Activate Tab After Tab Closing: First tab, Last tab, Right tab, Left tab, In activated order, Chrome default
• New Tab: Activated (foreground), Not activated (background), Chrome default

As you can see, there are lots of options to configure the tab opening and closing behavior in Google Chrome.

Chrome users need to open the extension’s options via the Wrench > Tools > Extensions > Options menu first to make the changes to the tab behavior in Chrome. The changes made on the configuration screen are active immediately which is handy for testing purposes.

The Tab Position Customizer extension empowers Chrome users to pick the tab opening and closing behavior that they want. You may have noticed that the extension has another option under Miscellaneous which configures Chrome to open pop-up windows always as new tabs in the same browser window.

Chrome users can download the extension from the official Google Chrome Web Store.

Question on how to clear individual cookies in the Google Chrome web browser just came up and I thought I write a small guide here on Ghacks about it. Google Chrome, just like any other modern web browser, accepts all cookies by default. Cookies are small data packages that are saved by domains on your computer. They can be used for positive things like saving preferences or session data, and negatively perceived things like tracking the user on the Internet.

Google Chrome users can clear all browsing data, which includes cookies but also other data like the browsing and download history, by clicking on the wrench icon in the toolbar and selecting Tools > Clear Browsing Data from the menu that pops up.

It is alternatively possible to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-Del for the same effect. A window is displayed where the data can be cleared.

Please note that there is a link to the Adobe Flash Player storage settings. If you click on that link you will be taken to Adobe’s Website Storage Settings panel where you can delete all or select Flash cookies.

If you go back to the Chrome browser you may have noticed that the clear browsing data window does not offer to clear individual files. Sometimes you may want to delete a specific cookie or a set of cookies only. This can be handy for web developers testing a new site feature, users who accidentally visited a site and want to delete its traces or users who want to clear personalized data.

The easiest way to clear individual cookies in Google Chrome is to enter chrome://settings/cookies into the address bar. This opens the cookies and other data listing in the browser. All stored cookies are displayed here. It is possible to remove all cookies or search for individual cookies.

A click on a site displays all cookies stored by that site on the computer. It takes another click to display detailed information about the cookie and the Remove button. If you click on Remove the selected cookie will be deleted from the system.

And that’s how you delete standard and Flash cookies in the Chrome web browser individually.

Ghacks readers know that the chrome://flags page leads to a list of experimental features in the Chrome browser. These features are not yet ready for prime time. Adventurous Chrome users can enable select features to change the behavior of the web browser in core areas. A big warning paragraph warns users that these “experimental features may change, break, or disappear at any time”.

Depending on your personal preferences, you may want to enable none or some of the experiments in Google Chrome. The list of available settings is large, which is why I will look at only a handful of experiments that have been added to the flags listing in recent time.

• Smooth Scrolling – Chrome users up until now had to install extensions like Smooth Scroller if they experienced scrolling issues in the Chrome web browser. With the Smooth Scrolling flag, they now can enable the feature natively.
• Lazy Background Pages – All extension background pages are loaded when the browser starts. This setting changes the default behavior so that they are loaded when needed.
• New Apps Install Bubble – When you install a new application in Chrome a new tab page is opened automatically. This can be irritating if you install many apps in the browser. This new flag changes the behavior by showing a bubble pointing at the new tab page instead.

• Enable NTP bookmark features – The new tab page in Chrome currently only lists the most visited sites and apps in its interface. This setting enables a Bookmark page on the new tab page.

• Enable syncing open tabs, syncing search engines – The two options can be used to sync both all open tabs and all custom search engines with all connected Chrome browsers.
• Enable shortcuts in the omnibox – Remembers autocomplete results and offers those the next time the same search term is typed in the Chrome address box

Chrome users find several useful experiments on the flags page that can change the behavior of the Chrome browser noticeable. Are you a Chrome user? If so, are you making use of experimental features in the web browser? (thanks Vineeth)

Most users of the Google Chrome web browser know that Google has integrated Adobe’s Flash Player in cooperation with Adobe into the web browser. The core advantage here is that Google can update the Flash plugin in the browser for its users. That’s a stark contrast to other web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera, where the user has to make sure that Flash updates are installed in a timely manner to protect the computer system from possible exploits and attacks.

If you look at the plugin listing in the Chrome web browser you may notice that the Flash listing says something like Flash (3 files) or Flash (2 files). You need to click on Details on the page to see what’s going on there.

You may notice that multiple Flash plugins are loaded in the Chrome web browser instead of just the native plugin. You can click on the Disable or Enable links to disable or enable specific Flash versions in the browser. This can be handy for Flash developers who need to test their applications in a different version of Flash, and for end users who do not want multiple running plugins in the owser.

Multiple enabled Flash plugin versions in the browser are not a problem according to Google.

It’s normal to see two Flash files in about:plugins. When both are listed as enabled, Google Chrome uses the built-in version by default, so you shouldn’t have to specify which one to use unless you specifically want Chrome to use the system version instead (has ‘NPSWF32.dll’ in the location field). Keep in mind that if you use the system version, you’re responsible for keeping Flash updated while the built-in version will update automatically via Chrome’s auto-update mechanism.

If multiple Flash plugins are enabled and the native plugin is one of them, then that plugin is used to display Flash contents in the Google Chrome web browser. This does not explain why a second Flash plugin is enabled in the browser, as it does not make sense if the native Flash plugin is always used if active.

My suggestion would be to disable the non-native Flash plugin in Chrome to be on the safe side.

Google Chrome has just fronted a new extension called Chrome Speak; a text reader for web content on the Google Chrome search engine. This will read highlighted text out loud. Whether from sheer laziness, bad eyesight, or just a desire to have a text reader on your browser, it is an interestingly accurate feature. You could easily listen to a Wikipedia entry while getting ready for work or entertain a room of friends with the feature so that you don’t have to read interesting tidbits aloud or have everyone crowd around the screen. These are hypothetical scenarios, of course. The ultimate point is that Chrome Speak works and it works fairly well.

What is meant by “fairly” well? It is the typical text reader voice; monotone and perpetual. As a result, certain segue in the text sound like a run-on sentence or a period that would normally bring appropriate pause is missed. Ultimately, the reading is understandable and you can work with it. For hearing information, it does serve a purpose.

Sometimes spending long hours in front of a computer screen can strain the eyes and you might want to take a break and still get the information from lengthy text. This Google Chrome extension will do the trick. Listen to long articles read aloud while resting your weary eyes. This is also useful for taking notes from lengthy text. While it is read to you, you can take information and jot it down without having to pause. Simply select any text on any webpage and Chrome Speak will read it out. You are able to customize the rate, pitch and volume of the reading voice. There are multiple languages supported and this feature can also be used offline if needed.

To download the extension, use the following link. It takes seconds and the installation is completed. To use Chrome Speak, click on the earphone icon in the upper right portion of the toolbar.

This will open a menu for the extension. This menu is what you will use to set speed, volume and pitch.

There is a field in which you can copy-paste or write text to hear. Click the speak button to hear the entered text. Select the “More options” option to set the voice options.

The Windows 7 default is a single digital voice called Microsoft Anna, a female voice with an American accent (generalized). You can add voices and select any of them from the drop-down menu in speech properties. The text will be read in any language selected, as long as it is supported by the extension.

The basic use involves a simple highlighting of text on a given page. Highlight the text that you want to have read and then right-click the highlighted field and choose “Read the selection text” to initiate the reading. You will start listening immediately at this point. Use the context menu, accessible from another right-click on the highlighted field or from the earphone icon, to select Stop to cease the reading.

The extension will stop on its own once it has reached the end of the highlighted text. Chrome Speak offers support on Windows, Mac OS X, and Chrome OS and uses native test-to-speech capabilities provided by these operating systems.

If you are a new Chrome user, or an old one who is now used to working with the browser in a certain way, you may be interested in tips to get the most out of the web browser. Maybe it is basic tips that can really help you improve your workflow, for instance by searching websites directly from Chrome’s address bar instead of loading a search engine’s website first to do that, or more advanced tips that involve keyboard shortcuts.

Google recently released a first party extension for the Chrome browser with the purpose of providing Chrome users with tips to use the web browser more efficiently.

The extension will display tips when it recognizes ineffective behavior, for instance if a user uses only windows and no tabs to browser multiple websites.

The core question here is obviously if those users would be able to find and install the Chrome Tips extension, and the answer is probably no.

Regardless of that oversight in design, it can be handy if you do not mind running the extension in the background while working in the browser.

The extension will display tips in a small toolbar on top. The core issue that I have with the extension is that the tips are time and action based, which means that you may never see a tip coming up if you are an advanced user.

I tested the extension for a long time and did not see a single tip come up, hence the lack of a screenshot.

If you open the constants.js file of the extension you will see all tips listed in the interface. Here are a few examples of the tips listed:

• Key for tip when user needs to be educated about switching between tabs.
• Key for tip when the user needs to be educated about pinned tab feature.
• Key for tip when user needs to be educated about browsing in private.
• Key for tip when the user needs to be educated about search from omnibox.

The extension in its current state offers 13 different tips. That’s not a lot and explains why some users may never see tips displayed in the browser. I personally would have preferred a link somewhere in the browser user interface to a static page that lists all the tips.

The idea is interesting especially since the extension can display tips whenever it recognizes ineffective user behavior. Still, a lot more tips and the option to display them directly would be handy.

Chrome users can install Chrome Tips from the official Chrome Web Store.

I also noticed a new design of the extensions listing in Chrome Dev. Not sure for how long it has been there but it looks clean and really nice.

I personally do not have the need for a web based screenshot solution like Webpage Screenshot for the Google Chrome browser. The core reason for this is that I use a desktop application – Snagit – for the task which allows me to take screenshots in any application and not only in Chrome.

Sometimes however you may not be able to install desktop apps on your system, which is for instance the case in most corporate computing environments or if you happen to own a Chromebook. In those cases you may have to settle for the next best solution, which may be Webpage Screenshot.

When you click on the extension icon in the Chrome address bar after installation, you see the three options Visible Screenshot, All Page Screenshot and Beta: Edit Content in the context menu.

The first two options should be self-explanatory. You can use the first to take a screenshot of the currently visible area on the screen, the second to take a screenshot of the whole page which means that scrolling pages are supported by the extension.

The third edit option finally allows you to edit the page before taking a screenshot. You can for instance remove elements from the page or add text annotations to it.

The extension loads the created screenshot in an editor-like mode afterwards regardless of choice. Here it is possible to use some basic editing tools to make modifications to the page.

The edit toolbar contains options to add text, arrows, lines or shapes on the screen to highlight, remove or add information.

You can save the screenshot in the end to the local computer system, use the share button to upload it to the Webpage Screenshot image hosting service or print the screenshot on a connected printer.

The options, which can be accessed via a right-click on the icon or a click on Options in edit mode, can be used to switch from saving screenshots in the png format to jpg and to edit the image header and footer information.

Webpage Screenshot is a handy extension for Chrome users who take screenshots of web pages open in the Chrome browser regularly. The functionality is solid, and the ability to edit the page before taking the screenshot is nice to have. A blur option is missing from the edit tools option, the only workaround is to either edit the element before taking the screenshot or to paint over it afterwards.

Chrome users can download Webpage Screenshot from the official Chrome Web Store.

I’m not a fan of blue on black text, or link colors that are barely distinguishable from a website’s background. While it is still possible to use a site that uses hard to read color sets, it is usually a lot easier to turn that color set into one that is more pleasing to the eye.

PlainClothes is a Google Chrome extension that will automatically override page styles on all pages that you visit in the browser. It uses a default color scheme that can be customized in the options.

By default, all pages will be displayed with a black text font on white background. The extension furthermore ensures that links will always be underlined, and that link colors use the standard blue and violet colors for unvisited and visited links.

You basically turn a page like this

into this

That’s the Yale Art page by the way.

You do not need to configure anything if you like the color schemes used by the extension. The extension displays its icon in the address bar. You can click on the icon to disable it for that page. The default website design will be displayed if the extension is deactivated.

A right-click on the icon and the selection of Options opens the preferences. Here you can make changes to the default design used when the extension is active.

It is possible to change the text, background, unvisited links and visited links colors separately, or make the following changes to the preferences.

You can allow websites to set text colors or use your system’s default colors instead of custom text and background colors.

It is furthermore possible to allow websites to set link colors instead of defining values for visited and unvisited links.

The extension displays examples right in the options which is handy to test if the selected color schemes are readable.

Two additional options are available in the PlainClothes preferences. You can disable the forced underlining of links and the use of default system fonts.

PlainClothes has been specifically designed for Internet users with impairments.

Chrome users can download PlainClothes from the official Google Chrome Web Store.

The default, or shall I say more prominent, installer for the Google Chrome web browser offers only single user account installations only. More precisely, it can only be installed for the user account that is currently logged into the operating system. That’s not a problem for single user systems, but if you maintain computers with multiple accounts, you might want to use an installer that will install the web browser for all user accounts at once.

What many users do not know is that Google is offering an alternative installer for Windows administrators who want to install the Chrome web browser for multiple user accounts.

The alternate Google Chrome installer for Windows is available here on this help page at the Google Chrome support website. A click on Alternate installer for all user accounts leads to the multi-user installer for Windows.

The installer is an offline installer, it comes with all program modules and does not need to download additional contents from the Internet during installation.

Google notes:

These alternate installers don’t require network connection to install Chrome, so you can install Chrome while being offline. Once installed, Chrome will attempt to automatically update whenever it detects that a newer version of the browser is available. However, your network configuration may prevent the browser from updating properly. It’s recommended that you bookmark this page and come back periodically to manually download newer versions of Chrome.

It should be obvious that administrator rights are required to run the Google Chrome multi-user installer under Windows. It also needs to be noted that running the installer will replace all other versions of Chrome that may be already installed on the computer.

Users of the system will be notified automatically that the browser has updated to a system-wide version during the next browser start. They may need to recreate profile information, especially so if they have used a more recent build of the browser before.

Administrators need to uninstall a version of Chrome that is already installed in the administrator account before they run the alternate Chrome installer.