Chrome has a lot of obscure features which could immensely enhance one’s browsing productivity if he were to know about them. This post intends to do reveal exactly those features.
Some of the following features might be something you already know. But as you read on, you are sure to bump into an amazing hidden chrome feature that you weren’t aware of, and that’s what makes this post worth going through. So, check it out!
1. Pin Tab.....
Just right click on a tab, hit “Pin tab” and the tab converts into a favicon and sticks itself permanently to the extreme left. Use this on those tabs that you never close (Gmail,frendz4m, for instance).
2. Paste and Go / Paste and Search...........
If you copy any URL outside Chrome and intend to visit that site on Chrome, then instead of doing Ctrl+V and Enter on the address bar, you could just right click and click “Paste and go.” Same for text that you want to search using Chrome’s address bar. Right click and “Paste and search.” Saves time in the long run
3. Drag and Drop Downloads...........
You can easily drag downloaded files from Chrome to your desktop or any other folder on your computer. That means, from now on, you don’t need to go and change the download location each time you want the files to be downloaded in a separate place other than desktop (or downloads folder).
4. Resources Page..................
While the entire Developer tools feature which Chrome offers (you can access it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I ) is unique and amazing, the Resources section is particularly useful for webmasters and anyone who owns a site and wants to know how fast his site loads on the browser. As you can see in the above screenshot, there are various options available to explore.
5. Task Manager...........
Chrome treats each tab as a separate process so that if one of them starts creating a problem, it can be killed and a browser crash could be prevented. It offers a built-in task manager to let you see the memory and CPU resources consumed by each tab. You can access it through Tools –> Task Manager or by pressing Shift+Esc.
6. Quick Calculation Results from Address Bar..................
You know that Chrome’s address bar doubles up as Google search bar too, but did you know that it could be used to make simple calculations? Yep, just type in 12*50 and wait a sec. The result will come up automatically.
7. Drag and Resize Text Box on a Webpage.................
Another very useful feature. A lot of times, the text boxes on webpages are annoying. They are too small and after you have typed a few lines, you get a scroll bar which is irritating. On Chrome, you could actually drag that box from the corner and make it bigger. You could try it right now with the comment box at the bottom of this page.
8. Site search from Address bar.............
If you have performed a search on a website then next time you can search it directly from Chrome’s address bar. Here’s how: lets say you have used this site’s custom Google search bar (located at the top right of this page) to lookup something before. Now, if you want to do it again, just type a few letters of site in the address bar, like guid.. and hit Tab. You’ll get a “Search guidingtech.com” option that’ll allow you to search this site directly from the address bar.
9. About:memory....................
For the geeks among you, Chrome provides an “About memory” page that can accessed by typing about:memory in the address bar. This gives detailed insights into how different processes in the browser are consuming memory.
10. Application Shortcuts...................
You could create standalone apps from webpages in Chrome by using Tools –> Create application shortcuts. This option could be used for sites that you use frequently and need them open all the time.
11. Sync Bookmarks (and AutoFills, Extensions) To Google Account............
If you have made the switch to Chrome and don’t use any other browser then you might as well make use of its inbuilt bookmarks sync feature.
The bookmarks sync feature in Google Chrome backs up your browser bookmarks to your Google account and syncs them when you are on Chrome on a different computer.
Here’s a step by step guide to the entire process.
Click on the setting icon given at the top right in your Google Chrome browser. Go to “Synchronize my bookmarks”.
In the dialog box that pops up, sign in with your Google account. After signing in, all the bookmarks will get transferred to Google’s servers.
If sync feature is already enabled with your current Google account on another computer, then it’ll prompt you to confirm that your existing online bookmarks will be merged with the bookmarks on the computer you are using. Click on “Merge and sync” button to merge and sync your bookmarks
A success notification will appear. Click OK.
That’s it. The bookmarks are synchronized now. An easy way to get all your bookmarks on any computer connected to the internet within seconds.
If you make any change in bookmarks on one computer, the change will appear immediately on the second computer. You may sync chrome bookmarks across as many computers as you want.
12. Get iPad Interface.................
You’ve heard about the iPad, haven’t you. And chances are you want to get one soon. Well, why not check out how your favorite sites would look on an iPad before you get to lay your hands on the actual device. It could be done by changing the user agent string of your browser to that of iPad.
You can change user agent string of your browser and enjoy the iPad interface right inside it. Changing user agent string in Firefox and Safari is easy. But Chrome doesn’t offer a direct method to do it.
Here’s a step by step guide to change user string in Chrome and get the iPad interface.
1]Right click on the chrome shortcut and select Properties.
2] Now go to “Shortcut” tab.
3] In Target field, you will find this text written (where “username” is your windows username):
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Replace the text with the text shown below by copying the text and pasting it inside target field (make sure you have your actual windows username after C:\Users\.. ).
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe -user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10"
4]Press OK.
Now open your Chrome browser. Open sites like Gmail, Twitter, YouTube that have released their iPad versions. Here’s a screenshot of Gmail in Chrome, which now is exactly like you’ll find it in an iPad.
Enjoy all the websites designed for iPad. You could also check how your own website looks on iPad (if you have one that is).
If you want to revert back to the original browser then you need to replace the user agent string with target location. Go to Chrome properties panel as mentioned in Step 1 and 2 and replace the user agent string with this text.
C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
If you are still getting the same iPad interface, clear the cache of your browser and it should be ok.
So, have you got the iPad yet? How’s the experience of using it? Tell me in comments.
13. Select Reopen All Tabs...............
Usually when Google Chrome crashes, it gives you a restore tabs option when you open the browser again. However, there could be other occasions when you need to restore tabs or save a group of open tabs, so that all your work is available when you open the browser next time.
This article discusses the following two ways to restore tabs and save tab groups in chrome.
1)Google Chrome’s inbuilt option to reopen the pages that were open last.
2)Session Manager extension.
.....Using the Google Chrome Options.........
Google Chrome comes with lots of handy features. Reopen last open pages is one of them. Here’s how to set that option in your browser settings.
Click on Tools menu .
Click on Options.
Under “Basic” tab, select “Reopen the pages that were open last” option. Click the close button.
Next time when you restart your browser you will notice that all the last open tabs will reopen
.......Google Chrome Session Manager Extension........
This extension provides a powerful way to save all your browsing sessions and reopen them anytime you need. This is particularly useful to those who research with lots of tabs open in different browser windows. It can help them save their tab groups separately under different names. It is much quicker and a better solution to bookmarking those pages (unless you need them permanently).
Session manager is simple to use. Once installed, it shows a small icon on the Chrome extension bar. If you click on it, it pops up a small session box asking you to save the current session. Give a name to session and press save button. That’s it. Simple and easy.
Now you can close all the tabs and get back to your work. If you want to open all your saved tabs once again just click on session icon and open the required session.
You’ll notice that each session displays number of tabs, number of windows and date of creation of session.
Why would you need it?
If you are researching on different topics and there are lots of tabs open, you can create sessions and revisit the tabs whenever you need them.
You can create sessions for most important sites which you check daily.
Check out the Session manager Chrome addon[chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/bbcnbpafconjjigibnhbfmmgdbbkcjfi]
14. drag tabs...............
in chrome ,u can drag tabs from one window to anoter window,or can split two tabs into two diffrent windows..
15. Copy Paste Only Text................
And last, but by no means the least, is this hidden Chrome feature that I, personally, have found it to be extremely useful since the day I discovered it. You know that if you copy anything from a webpage and paste it on some other application (except for pure text editors like Notepad), they bring along all sorts of HTML and CSS stuff with the text, right?
Next time, when you copy stuff from Chrome, and want to paste it somewhere else on Chrome itself (like a Gmail compose window, or a Google Docs document), use Ctrl+Shift+V instead of Ctrl+V if you just need the text. Quick and easy.
No comments:
Post a Comment