Google Chrome Plugins and Themes

Lately Google has been experimenting with the Chrome’s UI. This includes minor changes such as merging the refresh/go/stop buttons and major changes like having a side bar for tabs.

If you want to get the side tab here is what you do.

Note: Works with Google Chrome Dev Version and Chromium, but might not work with other versions

1.) Find your Google Chrome shortcut and right click it and go into properties

2.) Go the shortcut tab

3.) Where it says Target and add this to the end of it: “–enable-vertical-tabs”

4.) Click “Apply” and then “OK”

5.) Restart Chrome

6.) Right click on a tab and select “Use side tabs”

And that’s about it. Hopefully this UI change isn’t forced but an option. More info: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=31763

Remember those web apps you saw in Chrome OS? Well guess what? They are now coming to Google Chrome and Chromium. Developers can now use html5 to code web apps that replace desktop apps. More on that came be found here: http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/developers_guide.html Of course you’re probably wondering if you could get your hands on some and you can. Of course they are Google made and there are 3 of them: Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. Installing them require adding ” –enable-apps” to the target in your Chrome shortcut’s properties, restarting your browser and loading an unpacked extension. More in depth instructions can be found here: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/07/install-google-web-apps-in-google.html And if you want more information, it came be found here: http://code.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index.html

And please add a comment if you have suggestions/comments/corrections on my writing, thanks.

Dell has been expected to join the camp of producing the first Chrome according to the new code of Google Chrome OS system

The open-source operating system’s code library, appears to support the Dell hardware in some lists. Dell has been strongly rumored for being the 3rd hardware manufacturer who is working on a Chrome OS netbook slated to release at the end of this year, beside Acer and HP.

It was a year ago when the Google’s open source operating system was first announced, and after that the identity of Google’s hardware partners became the subject for much speculation.

Announcing to Taiwanese press in December 2009 that it would be releasing a Chrome-powered netbook in the 2nd half of 2010, Acer was the 1st one to throw its hat in the ring.

Google officially has mentioned that stated that the Chrome OS devices would be arrive late this year “from select partners.”, those rumors are now again gathering pace, with the some of latest developments naming not just Acer, but also HP and Dell to be the manufacturers of a Chrome hardware, the 3 biggest computer makers of the world.

Google had also announced that it would release its own-brand Chrome OS netbooks for both the business and consumers at the end of this year or may be early next year.

I got two extensions for you guys today and they both serve the same purpose. Which is, to show you where the website your on is from. And here they are:

1.) Chrome Flags

Download Page: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jhejngphiacapbgllhagbpdkkdieeaej

This is the one I’m more familiar with and the one I recommend. It’s Windows only, so if you’re running Linux or Mac skip down to the next one. In your URL bar, to the left of the go/stop button it displays a little flag. The flag symbolizes the location of the website’s server. Clicking on the flag brings open a pop-up which shows the server’s IP address, links to website information, link to the McAfee Site Adviser and WOT information.

2.)  Ultimate Chrome Flag

Download Page: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbpojpfdiliekbbiplijcphappgcgjfn

I haven’t used this one much but I got to say it does do the job well. Oddly it asks for your browsing history when installing which kind of bugs me but other than that I haven’t had anything else. Unlike the other extension this one has options. The options are what to display in the pop-up and what appears over the flag. You get a choice of three things for that: just display the flag, display WOT rating over flag or display Google page rank over flag. When you click the flag a pop-up appears which has several bits of information on it that you can edit in the options. First one being the country and IP address. Second one is the geo location of the server. Then Google page rank followed by the Alexa traffic rank. And then WOT ratings. And of course you can disable any of those in the options if you want.

Message from author: If you find a mistake please report it here or email it to me here: http://scr.im/duck33 and that’s also my Windows Live Messenger (for quicker fixes) And you can also tell me how bad my writing is :p Or just chat with me

Yesterday i wanted to take a very important print out of an online document for my research and found out there was no way to do a ‘Print Preview’ in Google Chrome. After searching for a while i came to a forum post by StevePaul here at ChromePlugins.org, who had posted a work around for it, which i thought would be great if i share it here.

How To Print Preview in Google Chrome

1. First of all you would need to download an extension called IE Tab. This is a very useful extension which opens websites in Google Chrome as if its opening in Internet Explorer. You can get more details on it here.
2. Now open the page which you want to print (or print preview), and click on the IE Tab extension icon besides your address bar. It would open a new tab which would display the page as if its Internet Explorer.
3. Once the page loads, right click anywhere on the page and you can see the option ‘Print Preview’ in the context menu.
4. Click on it and that’s it, you would be able to preview how the print would look.

Please Note: This tip is only a work-around for print preview using a third party extension. We can just hope that the Google Chrome Team includes this very essential feature (and pretty basic really) into the Chrome browser sooner rather than later.

Thanks Steve, for this wonderful hack.

This theme is specially for all the Nascar fans and more precisely for Dale Earnhardt Jr fans. I found this theme on ChromeThemes.org, again made by P.fil. I personally do not like Nascar, but nevertheless the theme looks awesome on your Google Chrome browser.

Dale Earnhardt Jr Theme For Chrome

Apply This Theme

Please Note: The theme would work on all the latest Stable, Beta and Developer Builds of Google Chrome.

Do let us know what you think about this theme, comments are appreciated.

The developer channel of Google Chrome today got updated to 5.0.342.1. With this release, Google Chrome is certainly heading towards the much awaited Google Chrome OS as Geolocation APIs have been enabled in its early form.

What Does Geolocation Feature Means?

The Geolocation APIs will allow developers to point the location of your computer by analyzing the WiFi networks around your location. This would enable websites to serve content based on the location of the user, which it would access by requesting the browser to share its location. The geolocation feature is optional and would require user confirmation every time.

Geolocation feature is already available on Firefox using its built in api and soon we would see this in the stable builds of Google Chrome.

As of now, this Geolocation feature is very limted and in order to use it you need to be on the latest developer build of google chrome. To enable geolocation, one needs to add the following command line in the browser shortcut :

––enable-geolocation

It is also mentioned that its User Interface is not completed yet and chrome would not remember what permissions you have set earlier.

The Future of Geolocation

As we see most of the browsers are now working on getting the geolocation feature in their browser as a basic feature, so it wont be long when it becomes a norm for browsers to have geolocation. This would enable a better browsing and a more regionally correct content served by websites. Although, as others mentioned, using Wifi to point the location of a user might not be the best option but certainly it would be more accurate than using IPs for the same.

How many of us have played Super Mario on our old “cassette” video game consoles? I guess a lot!! Super Mario was voted No.1 in an “All time Best Video Game” survey a few months back, and it was a great idea on part of p.fil to theme it for Google Chrome.

There were a lot of people requesting this super mario theme and so i thought to feature the theme here so that it would be easier for Mario fans to find it.

Super Mario Theme

Download Super Mario Theme For Chrome

Well it would have been much better if the buttons could have been themed as well, but i guess there are issues in designing themes for Google Chrome in crx format.

Your comments are appreciated.

The last time I wrote about Super Hero Themes For Chrome and it got a lot of response and many are waiting for Part 2 of that post. It might take some time though. One of the other request by a group of people was to review a few SEO tools which are now available for the browser.

How The Extensions Were Choosen

While compiling this list I was clear in my mind that i wont be listing “general stuff” under this, so around 200 odd extensions were left out. This list is mainly comprises of SEO Tools for Webmasters which would help them analyze a website in detail with regards to various parameters. One more feature of the extensions listed here is the fact that these extensions are not just one-dimensional, but these extensions are “Complete SEO Tools” showing a combination of parameters and value.

Best 3 Complete SEO Extensions

1. Chrome SEO

This is one of the most comprehensive SEO extensions available right now and certainly the most used one. The parameters are classified into various heads like Pages Indexed, Backlinks, Traffic Ranks, Bookmarks (social media), Cached Versions and Domain Details (including dns, whois, IP, etc). One of the best thing about this extension is that it contains all the basic information which a SEO person needs to see. For each “heads” it shows stats from 3-4 different parameters, like Backlinks as appears from Google, Yahoo, Alexa, etc. One of the other feature which is there is the Keyword Suggestion, however i am not sure if this is very well organized. The keyword tool just suggests additional keywords but does not lists it based on the number of searches. From a webmaster’s point of view i think there is no point in having this Keyword Tool in its present state.

Although, the extensions page shows that there are a lot of developments which are still going on specially in the keyword tool, and i am sure the future releases would be great.

2. SeoQuake For Chrome

When i was using firefox, i was using SeoQuake as my “primary SEO tool”, so when this was integrated with Google Chrome, i quickly installed it and have to say it was not disappointing. In terms of usability, it contains a wide variety of adjustable parameters which one can alter and select based on individual preferences. As like in the earlier extension we mentioned above, this one also contains all the basic information one needs, with some additional parameters such as the Internal/External Links display. With regards to functioning of the extension, the toolbar does not works well with all the websites and 3 out of 10 websites are displayed in messy way due to the SeoQuake toolbar. One other drawback I would say is that the extension is itself very slow in loading the parameters, much slower than the rest of the tools. However, since this displays all the parameters in a seach result as well in Google/Yahoo/Bing, makes it stand out from the rest of the extensions.

3. SEO Site Tools Extension

Since Search Engine Optimization is something which is very dynamic in nature and from time to time there are numerous parameters and tools which are introduced to enhance the performance of SEO. Keeping in mind such parameters, SEO Site Tools Extension includes some of these such as the SeoMoz Linkscape stats, Yahoo page links and Domain links separately, along with other conventional parameters. There is an option to highlight the nofollow links as well as in the 2 extensions mentioned above. There are a couple of features in this extension which makes it different from the ones i have mentioned already. In addition to showing the site backlinks structure, it also has some basic on-site optimization information and suggestions, like the HTML/CSS validation, meta keywords/description checker and also optimal suggestions for correcting these issues are provided. This tool also has a Keyword research tool which fetches data from Google Sktool, alongwith the search volumes. Even though its not that accurate or complete still its better than the keyword tool on Chrome SEO.

I hope you would find these tools helpful in your SEO work. Personally i would recommend using Seoquake Extension alongwith SEO Site Tools for best results and a detailed report for a website. If you just want to get some basic info about a particular website you are browsing then Chrome SEO should serve that purpose very well and would be easy on system resources.

If you are a developer and want to showcase your extension, themes or applications for Google Chrome over here at ChromePlugins.org kindly get in touch with us.