Add-ons and Greasemonkey-like user scripts

I really miss one thing in Chrome - add-ons or plugins. I have few of them (let's name just Adblock Plus, Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper, Flashblock and Mouse gestures) in my Firefox and it makes this browser a way better product.

You may imagine my joy when I heard that Google will adopt add-ons in Chrome:

Google's new Web browser eventually will support add-ons and user scripts à la Firefox Add-ons and Greasemonkey, Google engineer Ojan Vafai said during a panel discussion on the future of Web browsers at Web 2.0 Expo in New York on Friday.

First Update

Updating software is important. Here is a short story of updating Chrome.





...and after Chrome restart:

Broken flash repair

This time I stumble upon a flash video on YouTube. I just want to see another part of my favorite Top Gear program and it was not playing at all. Just load video in back (I can see running gauge) but no video playing.

Flash plugin was dead!

Now I have two choices - restarting the browser or restarting the flash plugin. In all other browsers I had to restart the whole thing. Users of Chrome are lucky - they should start Chrome task Manager (Shift+ESC) and just kill the misbehaving flash plugin.

Flash frame within YouTube turns black with sad face (yes, it works for tabs or plugins) and at the top of the tab there was the message that "The following plug-in has crashed: Shockwave Flash". Intentionally, at least for this time.

After reloading the tab it loads the new instance of Flash plugin and video starts.

Nice work, guys!

Saved passwords

It's nice to have buddy who remember your passwords. It's natural that web browser offer you to remember your web passwords. But what if you need to know what are those eleven bullets that password manager automatically entered below your login?

Firefox can show you the passwords in a password manager. The only problem is that it shows all your passwords at once. Not a big problem when you are sitting at home, but what about showing all passwords in a office or in an airport? Tens of people can see your passwords! Not a big deal!

Chrome is more secure even in this one little feature. It stores passwords (when you allow it, of course). It also offer you to show your passwords. But it's showing only the password for account you currently select.

Only problem is that you can not copy that password, but I hope someone will take care on this.

Easter egg

Two simple words: about:internets

Sad tab

It seems that this screen displaying "Aw, Snap!" text is named Sad tab and is something like BSOD of individual tab. Anything went wrong so tab was killed and the rest of the browser remains.

Aw, Snap!

Every time something can go wrong. But reporting problem with a piece of humor is quite nice.



This remind me Haiku error messages

Cables have been cut
Southwest of Northeast somewhere
We are not amused.

from BeOS Operating System and it's applications.

Accidentally closed

It happened to everyone. You accidentally close tab without bookmarking address. Or even worse - you closed tab before submitting form?
No problem with Chrome!
On the new tab there is a list of Recently closed tabs. It contains tabs that were recently closed (intentionally or accidentally) with all their data and state. So you will never lose unsibmitted text again.

Resizing text area

Editing text in web browser could be painful. Remember your last Wikipedia article editing? Especially when you need to enter few more sentences than web designer thought you may enter and you have to scroll your text in a tiny little text area. It become real issue so I've got small bookmarklet for resizing text area on page. One click and every text area is 10 characters wider and longer. Instant text area enlargement. But it's not so easy when you have to look for this bookmarklet every time you edit something big. Not to mention that I am not always editing on my own PC.

Pain!

But in Chrome there is the gray thing with stripes in a bottom right corner of every text area. You drag this corner and move it right or down to make your life better.

Move tabs to create Chrome window

It's common that tabs can be moved. But tabs in Chrome can be moved out of tab row.

When you remove tab from tab row and drop it somewhere else, you will get new Chrome window surrounding this new tab. This way it's possible to create ad hoc windows and move tabs between them.

Memory usage

Chrome is using little more memory than Firefox. But it is able to free memory wiser than Firefox, so it's able to run longer without getting very big.

If you look at about:memory you can see running browsers (Chrome, Firefox, MSIE) and their memory usage. It does not recognize alternative browsers like K-Meleon or Flock - those may be added later.

Below this is a list of Chrome processes (tabs) with their PIDs, tab name and memory consumption.

Missing status bar?

I am used to look at addresses of active links at status bar. That's why I always have status bar visible in Firefox. But there is no status bar in Chrome. The active link address appears in a auto-hide strip at the bottom of the page. When the focus is removed from link, the address disappear. Nice idea!

Running

It seems that it's up and running. Yes, running is the right word to describe the speed of this peace of software, mainly on scripted pages like Gmail.

Installed!

Well, it's finally installed. Installation went smooth, all I have to do is download just 475kB long ChromeSetup.exe installer from (http://www.google.com/chrome) and run it. Installer downloaded rest of installation and after a while just offered me to import settings from Firefox of MSIE.

In fact I didn't import anything because I don't use MSIE at all and Firefox import failed because the Firefox had to be shut down (and I resist to do so).

Downloading installer

I had to go offline for a while but now I managed to download Chrome Installer from http://www.google.com/chrome. I am looking forward to new experience.

Hello world!

Just a few minutes before Google release long rumored and short awaited Google Chrome browser I am establishing this communication portal to share facts, thoughts and feelings.