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By Becoming a Google Chrome Master

Google Chrome might have used the rather clever marketing ploy of focusing on simplicity and it being a minimalistic browser, but once you start to dig deeper and delve below the surface there are actually plenty of features to get your teeth into . . . features which can really speed up your Google chrome experience and make you the Master of Google Chrome. There’s really plenty to go at – bookmark-lets, shortcuts, add-ons, themes and functionality features. Are you ready for the challenge? Then we shall begin;

• If you want to search your browsing history for a page which is either a long way back or forwards, then all you have to do is to click and hold the back or forward button depending on which way you want to go – oh, you can right-click to do the same task.
• If you have a URL in clipboard, then simply right click on Chrome’s address bar which will give you the option to paste and go to your chosen destination . . . saving a valuable tap on the enter key (they all add up you know).
• Resize any textarea by simply clicking and dragging on any corner.
• Zooming in and out of pages on Chrome is easy – using Ctrl + the Mousewheel
• Would it be handy to move downloads from your Chrome status bar to save them on desktop or any Explorer window? Well, you can drag and drop them – simple as that.

Google Chrome Keyboard Shortcuts

Not everybody likes using a mouse, so especially for those people there are loads of keyboard shortcuts (lots of them are the same as Firefox) on Google Chrome. Here are a few of the most popular built in keyboard shortcuts;

• Ctrl + B – only on Google Chrome – used to toggle the book mark bar both off and on
• Shift + Escape – only on Google Chrome – will open up the Google Chrome task manager
• Ctrl + L – for moving the cursor to the address bar
• Ctrl + T – opens up a new tab
• Ctrl + K – for moving the cursor to enter a Google search on the address bar
• Ctrl + N – opening up a new window
• Ctrl +  Shift + T – to open up the last tab which was closed
• Ctrl + Tab – to cycle through the open tabs
• Ctrl + Shift + Tab – to reverse the above cycle
• Ctrl + Shift + N – only on Google Chrome – to open up a new window “Incognito”
• Ctrl + W – close the tab
• Ctrl + H – open up the history tab
• Ctrl + R – to refresh your current page
• Alt + Home – will load up your home page
• Ctrl + 1 – 9 – switch between the open tabs in the session

A Little More Google Chrome Tweaking

You can tweak your Google Chrome experience even more, it’s really straightforward once you’ve got the hang of it!

• Toolbar – adding the home button – the original Google Chrome toolbar is pretty sparse don’t you think, but that just means that there’s more room for you to add to it. If you want to show off your home page (or pages) in one click, then go to the Options dialog Basics tab and check off where it says “Show Home button on the toolbar” - these things are so easy when you know how!
• Amend default location for downloads – whilst you’re in Options you can also amend the default location for any downloads from the “My Documents” folder, you can do this with the “Minor tweaks” tab. Don’t know who named that tab but I love it.
• Automatically open up tabs from your last session – yes, you can restore the tabs just like you can with Firefox. It’s in Options dialog Basics area, simply click on “Restore the pages that were open last” – that’s what I like, plain talking tabs.
• Disable functionality to significantly speed up browsing – the more stuff you have open, the longer it takes – ain’t that frustrating. Well, if you want to surf without having Java, Flash or Javascript slowing the job down then you can – if you really want to. Anyway, just go down the list of “-disable” found in the Chrome startup switches to block content, plug-ins, features etc. Don’t forget to enable them again later if you need them though.
• Fed up of seeing the little screen on start up – you can start Google Chrome with a maximized window at all times if you use the “-start-maximized” startup switch.