Google Chrome browser gets even better with extensions
Posted January 25, 2010 – 1:40 pm
I’ve been using the Google Chrome browser since Day One – in my book, it is the best everyday browser out there. Largely because it is lightweight and superfast loading pages.
Google Chrome launches extensions
I’ve been using the Chrome Developer version for many months – it was the only version that worked well with my dual monitor setup.
In December, Google launched an apps store for Chrome – except that they call apps ‘extensions’. I’ve been using these extensions for several weeks and LOVE them! but they haven’t been available in the general release versions of Chrome.
Today, Google unveiled a new general release version of Chrome – now extensions are available to everyone. You should definitely try them out. Quite fantastic stuff!
My favorites are:
- xmarks - manage bookmarks across browsers and/or computers located anywhere
- lastpass - manage passwords and login info across browsers and/or computers
- evernote - the official extension for the evernote note taking / web clipping service that is all the rage (and deservedly so)
- delicious - beautifully designed widget for adding bookmarks to your Delicious account. cleaner and better than the Firefox version.
- netvibes - auto-detects RSS feeds in Chrome and provides one-click button to add it to your Netvibes RSS reader (still only available for developer version, i think).
These are essential in my book.
I’m also trying out the aviary, picnik and webpage screenshot extensions for taking screenshots. They all seem to work fine, but not sure I am 100% sold on any of these yet and I may be sticking with jing, a program I’ve been using screenshots for a while.
I have also been using one of the several Page Rank tools – Kuber Page Rankchecker. This seemed the simplest and best of the bunch. Some of the others seemed to be trying to do too much and I worried about slowing down my page loads while they collect all their data.
I haven’t been too happy with the RSS auto-detect extensions for Chrome. Unlike other browsers, RSS auto-detect isn’t built in, so you need an extension to handle that. The existing ones all seem geared to plugging the feed straight into your reader, especially your Google Reader (which I don’t use – I prefer Netvibes, especially since they launched their new Wasabi Reader which is fantastic). I’d like a Chrome RSS extension that simply does auto-detect and then shows you the actual feed url.
The Chrome Firebug extension isn’t where it needs to be – or at least it wasn’t a couple of weeks ago. The Firefox version wins hands down at this point and is largely why I continue to use Firefox very heavily. Hopefully, the Chrome version comes along and becomes a near clone of the FF version.
I also hugely, hugely like how all the Chrome extensions present in the exact same area in the browser frame – vs. Firefox where they can be located in any of at least 4 places in the browser frame. That’s very confusing and means you need to remember exactly what extensions are located where – and I’m not smart enough to remember stuff like that.
I do notice that with a pile of extensions running, Chrome doesn’t seem quite as light as it did before. I believe each extension opens up a new process on your computer, so now I’ve got a lot more Chrome processes running and consuming memory. That’s a potential issue that they maybe need to address – trimming Chrome memory consumption.
Links:
Some other bits about this from ReadWriteWeb and Techcrunch.
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