Every so often we all need to look at a map for reference purposes or to get directions. If you are looking for a great quick reference app then join us as we look at the Mini Google Maps extension for Google Chrome.

Mini Google Maps in Action

While this may look like a rather basic map extension there is more to it than meets the eye at first glance. Here is the default view when you open Mini Google Maps for the first time. Things that we really liked about this extension were:

• Three different aerial views available (Map, Satellite, & Terrain)
• Three different viewing sizes available (and the extension remembers your chosen size)
• The ability to get directions in combination with a map

We decided to try each of the viewing sizes available…here you can see the “Medium Setting”. Notice that the scale stays the same but you get more territory included to view.

Google Chrome is a superior browser to any i’ve used in the past 10 years or so, simply based on its performance. Firefox is great, but i’m not interested in all the add-ons and such that slow a browser down.

What I’m interested in is performance.  As i scower through the web with my many tabs open i want to be able to interact with them quickly as i cycle and rearrange tab by tab.

No other browser has yet given me the ability to browse the web the way Google Chrome has.   Firefox doesn’t even come close when it comes down to the tiniest little details. Lets talk about those details, see if you agree with me?

Since you last saw an edition of Chrome Corner, we've done some re-thinking about what it should be. Instead of trying to force together a weekly update when there's sometimes just not enough news to justify doing it, the Corner will now crop up whenever the crew at Download Squad has a nice haul of of Chrome-y goodness to post about.

Today's topic: syncing across multiple computers!

Google Chrome can sync your bookmarks, but what about all the other bits and pieces that you want available on all your machines? Passwords? Form data? Notes?

The Extension Gallery has plenty of awesome options that can help you keep all your Google Chrome installs marching in step -- read about eight useful ones after the break!

Passwords and form data: LastPass, RoboForm
Apart from not having the same set of bookmarks available on every machine I use, nothing irks me quite as much as having to recall and re-enter all my passwords manually. LastPass and RoboForm both handle the task admirably, and they have other benefits as well. LastPass, for example, includes a strong password generator which makes creating hard-to-crack passwords easy.

Both extensions can also auto-fill form data for you with your pre-entered information (name, address, phone number, etc.).

Tabs and Sessions: TabSync, FreshStart
FreshStart is a fantastic session manager and synchronizer (which I wrote about before), with the ability to restore sessions from machine to machine. It's also great at recovering from crashes. TabSync is more minimalistic in its approach. Set it up to auto-sync or press the button to do things manually, and your current window's tabs are locked in so you can restore them again later.

Google's Chrome browser has been heavy hit by people claiming it has serious privacy issues.

After an interesting discussion with people who are, “relevant to my interests”, the topic of Google Chrome soon came up. Most predictably what was mentioned was the privacy issues raised with it. As a believer in the open-source vetting process, I heavily disagree that Google could be doing anything subversive to our personal data.

To settle this argument in a non-subjective way I decided the best course of action would be an experiment. Essentially, what I wanted to test was the difference in packets between Google Chrome on first boot-up and search term “test123″ and a comparable browser with similar conditions. This way, we test Chrome against a vetted control browser. A few conditions before we get started:

• Experimental Browser: Google Chrome Beta for Linux (Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 x64) with experience reporting disabled.
• Control browser: Midori 0.2.3 (Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 x64), a WebKit browser licensed under a similar permissive license as Chrome.
• Analysis Method: A tcpdump, sudo tcpdump -w testbrowser.pcap -s 1550 dst www.google.com, command and Wireshark analysis.
  • This tcpdump commands monitors all traffic going to the Google domain (216.239.32.0 – 216.239.63.255)
  • Wireshark was to make the dump look pretty.
• Procedure: Start the dump, load up the browser and enter a search term to Google for “test123″. Stop the packet dump after this and monitor the results.

What I found:

The results actually surprised me in a very positive way. Not only did the two browsers communicate on exactly the same ports but Chrome also used around 60 less packets in the final dump. A cruel twist of irony that a third-party browser communicates with Google over 100% more than Chrome does. Anyway, without further hesitation, here is the dump from the different conditions.

If you don't need notifications for every Google services under the sun (as provided by One Number) and you're just looking for a solid GMail notifier for Google Chrome, have a look at the Google Mail Checker Plus extension.

I haven't encountered many Chrome extensions which utilize the desktop notification functionality, but what better place to put it to good use than a mail checker? Install GMC+, wait patiently for new messages to arrive, and you'll get slide-up notifications whenever a new message arrives in your inbox.

GMC+ also includes a long list of customizations via its options menu including audio alerts, ten different icon sets, and more languages than you can shake a stick at. Google apps accounts are also supported.

It's well worth adding to your Google Chrome install if you're a GMail user.

Would you like a “built-in” same tab dictionary reference function in Google Chrome? Today we look at the Google Dictionary extension which easily allows you to find word definitions from your browser.

Installation & Setup

You will need to confirm the installation while adding the extension to Chrome…click “Install” to complete the process.

Once the installation process has finished you will see a new “Address Bar Icon”, a quick message explaining how the extension works, and how to manage your extensions.

Besides a killer algorithm and brand-name recognition, Google's greatest strength is its speed at releasing new products. We get to play with new, cool, and ever-improving tools for free. Recently, though, we've seen that being unwitting lab subjects can kind of stink.

Note: This subjective post isn't short, and lacks funny video embeds. It's a rant about a few aspects of an otherwise impressive firm that I would love to see improved. Want to skip to the rant-y part? Here's the gist.

"Labs" we love: Gmail & Google Wave

Google has practically reinvented how web applications and software are developed with their overriding love of "Beta," a term that used to indicate a product that was functional and mostly stable, but not quite something the company would stand fully behind or "publish," whatever that means now.

Have you ever found that a quick recommendation for a similar site to the one that you are looking at would be handy? If so then you might want to check out the Google Similar Pages extension for Chrome.

Google Similar Pages in Action

We chose three different types of websites for our test. The first was for “fileforum”, a software download site.

Note: If a website is still new to the Internet you may receive a “No similar pages found.” message.

Clicking on the “Toolbar Button” opened a “Popup Window” that displayed four similar and very useful recommendations for software download websites.

Chrome: We love Gina's Better Gmail Firefox extension, a bundle of user scripts that improves the Gmail experience. Now that Google's beefed up support for Chrome extensions, reader Dimitar Gruev has taken a shot at bringing an unofficial Better Gmail to Chrome.

Almost a year ago our own How-To Geek put together a version of Better Gmail for Chrome, but that was way back when Chrome didn't even have extensions (his were all bundled into a single user script). This new Chrome extension is an unofficial Better Gmail for Chrome that was inspired by Gina's Firefox extension and our earlier Better Gmail for Chrome bag o'scripts.

Once installed, access Better Gmail's options by clicking the wrench -> Extensions -> Better Gmail Options. Tick the boxes of the features you want activated and you're good to go. You can choose to hide little used fields like "Invite Friends," remove ads, show the number of unread emails in the favicon, and more.

Gruev says future versions of Better Gmail will hide spam count, move to next message on delete or archive, and include support for POP3 email. A big round of applause goes to Gruev for putting this together. What kinds of features do you hope for in future versions of Better Gmail? Share your ideas in the comments.

Keyword bookmarks are my absolute favorite time-saving Firefox feature. I use them literally hundreds of times a day—a good system of keyword bookmarks saves all kinds of time in the browser. Unfortunately Chrome isn't so friendly to keyword bookmarkers.

After searching high and low for a way to tweak the bookmark dialog in Google Chrome to display an option to add a keyword to my bookmarks, turns out all I needed to do was turn to the help of a few clever readers who'd emailed in how to achieve keyword bookmark bliss in Chrome. The imperfect-but-workable solution:

I just realized that keyword bookmarking is as easy as managing your search engines. Right-click the omnibox (address bar), click "Edit search engines," and add a search engine. Use a Name you will recognize, enter the keyword you want to use, and just enter the URL for your bookmark in the URL box. Voila!

Mac OS X only: Chrome for Mac Beta just updated with support for Chrome extensions. Windows and Linux users have been enjoying support for Chrome extensions for a while, and while Mac users who're subscribed to the dev channel of Chrome have had extension support since January, this is good news for Mac users who prefer the relative stability of the beta release. Ready to get started installing some saucy Chrome extensions but not sure where to start? Check out these 13 excellent extensions, or just head to our Chrome extensions page to browse other extensions we've covered.
The release also brings with it bookmark sync, the bookmark manager, cookie manager, and task manager—so there's a ton of good stuff to in this beta release. [Google Chrome Blog]

On a recent Google Chrome post one of our commenters -- MoneyMike -- lamented the apparent passing of one of Chrome's popular UI features in recent nightly builds: pinned tabs.

I, too, noticed the change recently and wondered what was going on. There's been plenty of discussion amongst Chrome developers, and it boils down to an evolutionary step for Chrome and the introduction of app tabs. The arrival of phantom tabs recently is also part of the change.

To clear the air, I pinged Google's Eitan Bencuya to see if he could shed any light on the situation. Here's his response:

"As you know, all of these features are still pretty experimental (they're not even in the dev channel yet) and we're trying out different approaches to see what works. In this case this is part of a larger set of tweaks we are making related to extensions but we haven't yet fleshed out all the details of app tabs specifically."

Do you use Google Notebook on a daily basis and need an easy way to access it while browsing in Google Chrome? Then you will definitely want to have a look at the “add 2 Google Notebook” extension.

Installation & Setup

Before you can finish adding the extension to Chrome you will need to confirm the installation…click “Install” to complete the process.

As soon as the installation process has finished you will see your new “Toolbar Button” and a brief extension management message. There are no options to worry with and you can immediately get started on adding those new notes.

Google's user interface mockups and YouTube video were a hot topic the other day, and that buzz will likely continue until we finally see a tablet device emerge from Mountain View to accompany the Nexus One.

If the images and video weren't enough proof for you, changes are under way in the Chromium source code which certainly make it look like Google is getting serious about a new interface for Chrome OS on touchscreen tablets.

Coming soon to the Chromium nightly builds is an --enable-vertical-tabs command line switch. While the source note clearly states that this does nothing other than toggle a preference right now, there's every reason to believe that it will move the Chrome tabstrip from the top of your browser window to the side -- as shown in one of Google's tablet user experience slides.

It's a starting point -- though I'm more interested to see how the tab switching interface shapes up.

Since debuting in December, more than 2,000 extensions have been created for Google Chrome. Now, Chrome users have access to about 40,000 more, thanks to support for Greasemonkey scripts in Chrome 4.0 for Windows and the Chrome Developer builds for Mac and Linux.

We’ve covered Greasemonkey and the browser-awesome it can provide in the past, but if you aren’t familiar, the plugin (originally for Firefox) allows site-specific JavaScript user scripts to run on a page, providing additional options and functionality. So, for example, you can install a script that will give additional YouTube viewing or download options or pipe-in data from other sources and display it alongside other content.

In Chrome 4.0, you can go to Userscripts.org, the big clearinghouse for Greasemonkey scripts, and install many of the more than 40,000 scripts directly in Chrome (about 15-25% of the scripts won’t work yet). On the backend, Chrome will convert those scripts into a Chrome Extension, which you can then manage and uninstall the scripts with ease.

This is a huge boon for productivity lovers. Greasemonkey scripts are a great way to add easy functionality to web pages and the fact that they can be installed and uninstalled the same way as regular Chrome Extensions flat-out rocks. If you are running the development version of Chrome for Mac (or the Chromium Nightly Builds) or the beta for the Linux version of Chrome, you should also have Greasemonkey support.

The Greasemonkey extension has long been one of our favorite tools for Firefox, allowing us to bend the web to our will with light and simple scripts written in JavaScript. Now most Greasemonkey scripts work in Chrome, no extension required.

In fact, when you install a userscript in Chrome, it actually installs as though it's a regular old extension. That means, as the original Greasemonkey developer and Google employee Aaron Boodman points out on the official Chromium Blog, that Chrome users now have roughly 40,000 more extensions to add to the list.

Some scripts won't work with Chrome just yet because of differences between Firefox and Chrome, but it looks like that number is somewhere around 15-20%. Not bad, Chrome. It's getting more and more tempting to consider Chrome as a viable Firefox alternative every day.

The improved support for userscripts should work on any Chrome version over 4, which includes the stable version on Windows and both of the beta versions on OS X and Linux. If you'd like to try out a few good userscripts—for Chrome or Firefox—our list of the top 10 Greasemonkey user scripts is a good place to get started.