Chrome Offline Installer

Chrome uses a installer that you have to first get which then downloads the latest stable version of the browser. If you have to install Chrome on several machines, you can grab the offline installer. That way, you don't even need internet connectivity for each install.

I found this helpful tip on the official Chrome Forum.

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HOW TO cut & paste just the text in a browser, not the formatting

Typically when I have to paste formatted text within a rich text box of a web app, I paste it into the search box of the browser first to remove the formatting & then paste the un-formatted text in a rich text editor. What a pain!

I learnt from the WebApps StackExchange forum that in Chrome, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + V to paste the unformatted version of the copied text.

While monkeying around to see if there is any trick to make this work in browsers other than Chrome, I serendipitously discovered that  Ctrl + Shift +C opens Developer Tools in Chrome & triggers the Inspect element hotkey that shows a tooltip for a webpage element that you hover upon.

Also see:
Keyboard shortcuts common to Firefox & IE

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Do you live on the web?

We lived in farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're gonna live on the internet! - Sean Parker/The Social Network

Google has announced that the Chrome operating system which was supposed to come out in the fourth quarter of 2010 will now be available through netbooks in the first half of next year.

On the elegant but minimalist Chrome OS website, it says Chrome OS is for people who live on the web. To check if you are a native of the web, take their fun quiz which is more of an ad for their products.

One of the Chrome OSs touted benefits is that all your apps, documents, and settings are stored safely in the cloud. The downside I see to this centralized approach is the criticality of protecting your account credentials so that you are not lost in the cloud.

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Chrome silently auto-updates itself, integrated Adobe Flash Player & PDF viewer

Google's advertises Chrome features pretty well in its “20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web” guide. I didn't know about these till I read them up in that guide -

In Chrome, for example, sync saves all bookmarks, extensions, preferences and themes to your Google Account. Use any other Internet-connected computer, and all you need to do is fire up Chrome and log in to your Google Account through the browser’s sync feature. Voila! All your favorite browser settings are ready to use on the new machine.

In the Google Chrome browser, you’ll notice a little something extra in the Options menus: a direct link to the Adobe Flash Player storage settings manager. This link makes it easy to control local data stored by Adobe Flash Player (otherwise commonly known as "Flash cookies"), which can contain information on Flash-based websites and applications that you visit. Just as you can manage your browser cookies, you should be able to easily control your Flash cookies settings as well.

Chrome has integrated Adobe Flash Player and a PDF viewer into the browser, so that both these popular plug-ins are also auto-updated.

Another technique that modern browsers like Chrome use to fetch and load web pages much more quickly is called “DNS pre-resolution”. The process of translating a web address into an IP address through a DNS lookup, or vice versa, is often called “resolving.” With DNS pre-resolution, Chrome will simultaneously look up all the other links on the web page and pre-resolve those links into IP addresses in the background. So when you do actually click on one of the links on the page, the browser is ready to take you to the new page instantly. Over time, Chrome also learns from past visits so that the next time you go to a web page that you’ve previously visited, Chrome knows to automatically pre-resolve all the relevant links and elements on the web page

Microsoft's contribution to AJAX is cautiously acknowledged -

But the dynamic web as we know it today truly came to life when XHR (XMLHttpRequest) was introduced into JavaScript, and first used in web applications like Microsoft Outlook for the Web, Gmail and Google Maps.

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My favorite Chrome Extensions

As a Web developer at heart, I have a fascination for browsers.  I have the 5 popular browsers - IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera & Chrome, installed on both my home & work PCs mostly to look out for cross-browser issues. I like exploring browser features in all of them. Years ago, I was overjoyed when I discovered the "View Selection Source" option in the Firefox context menu. This is a unique built-in feature that let's you view rendered source of a desired portion of a web page. It's a great help while troubleshooting web page issues.

As of 5 February 2010, Chrome which has been in circulation for over a year has become the third most widely used browser. Browser Extensions are a great way to add more features and functionality to the browser. Extensions work specifically on browsers that support it. Firefox probably has the most available among browsers. Starting with version 4, Google Chrome (for Windows) supports Extensions. The extension gallery beta was officially launched on 8 December 2009 and contained over 300 extensions.

I'm evaluating several Chrome Extensions & these are the ones I like so far -

• Google Dictionary -  WordWeb is my favorite desktop tool to look up difficult words. The Dictionary Extension brings up meanings & definitions of words that you double-click upon in a balloon in the same web page. Although the descriptions are not as comprehensive as in WordWeb, it makes for a seamless & unintrusive experience.
• Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer Extension - I dislike hyperlinks that don't notify they are not conventional web pages & proceed to open up external programs - like a PDF link opening up the klutzy Adobe Reader, which in turn starts looking for it's own updates (depending on how Adobe Reader is configured). When you are engrossed in a topic, it kind of disturbs the flow. The Google Docs Viewer Extension lets you read PDFs (or Powerpoint presentations and other documents) within the browser without depending on any PDF reader (or supporting app) to be installed on the system. It has a friendly UI that also lets you quickly find keywords within the PDF. What's more, if you only read PDFs off the Web, you wouldn't have to install any PDF Reader app. 

Also see:
My favorite keyboard shortcuts in Firefox 3 and IE
Chrome team's favorite extensions

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