How to find the best apps for Chrome recommended by your Google+ friends

The Google Chrome Store now has an improvement. The ability to find Chrome Apps and Extensions recommended by your Google+ circles and friends. The point of the whole exercise is not just to now which Chrome Apps your pals are using but finding the most popular ones, recommended by your friends. it can be quiet insightful and the apps being used by your Google+ friends might be the ones trending and becoming popular. The Chrome App store is extremely useful and since Chrome became the most used browser in the world, their app store has been offering some of the most amazing apps, to make your Chrome experience even easier. Apps are all about improving your Browser experience.


How to find Google Chrome apps my Google+ friends are using
1. Go to Google Chrome Web Store
2. On the left hand side click on 'From your circles'
3. You find a list of Apps that your friends have added a +1 to
4. you will also find a few suggestions from the folks at Google to help you discover more
5. Click on the App and on the right-hand corner of the app see how many people have +1d the app. 
So try out this new feature and do let us know how it helped. 

An original post by

Sociolatte

Google Chrome Themes - Create your own

Google Chrome is now set to take over as king of web browsers. According to stats from statcounter over the last weekend. Google Chrome was the most popular web-browser in the world. This seems to be happening over weekends when people are away from their work computers and on their personal PCs. Chrome is the web-browser of choice for personal use. It is significantly faster that IE and much easier to use. So with all its popularity, users would want some nice themes to go with it. The default theme fro Chrome can be quiet a bore and you can spice up your Chrome experience with amazing themes that are available online for free.


Here is a list of resources to help you get the best Google Chrome Theme.

1. Google Chrome Web Store

You can search for an entire range of themes at the Chrome Web Store and search by Artists or by Google itself. The ones by Google are the kind that are a little plain and the best bet would be to search for themes by artists. A lot of Anime themes seem to be very popular with users right now.

2. Use My Chrome Theme to create your own

This Chrome Extension lets you create you own theme in 3 easy steps. What you need to do once you install the app is to upload a photo, once you do that you can then adjust you image - size, placements and more. Next you can add color - add color to tabs, omnibox and remaining parts of the browser. You can add your own photo for bragging rights with your pals. When they see Chrome open with your photo. Once completed you can then share your Theme on Google+, use it on your own chrome or create a separate link to share with people. 

An original post by

Sociolatte

Update to Chrome 17 to enjoy faster web browsing and added security

This is really happening fast two months after the release of Chrome 16 comes the release of Chrome 17, just a month after being launched in Beta and a day after the launch of Chrome for Android. There are actually two features that Google says is what makes the latest version a must have for faster, quicker and safer browsing. The way Chrome 17 loads faster is through something called 'Prerendering' what this means simply is that as you are typing an address in the omnibox, chrome will start actually loading pages for the site you are about to visit and so when you click enter it will seem as though the site is there already. This will make it look like the page or website has loaded instantly. Reducing the time from the moment you click enter and the time it takes to open the website. 

The second feature is the added security. Google explains this in very simply terms - they have a whitelist based on files that are know to come from various publishers across the internet. So if you are about to download a .exe or .msi file; there are executable files, Chrome will check the history of known publishers and help save your system by warning of an potentially dangerous download. This is based on known issues from publishers across the web. Chrome can also warn you of Phishing attacks and harmful download based on its vast knowledge-base. You will get a huge red page that helps you get back to safety.


How to download Chrome 17
1. From your Chrome Browser click on the wrench icon
2. Click on 'About Google Chrome'
3. It should start updating instantly or you can click on update now
If you do not have Chrome installed you can download it right now. 
Source: Chrome Blog, if you want the tech aspects you can go here.

An original post by

Sociolatte

What is Google Instant pages and how does it work

Google has just announced a new feature in it's latest stable version of Chrome. With instant pages Google now pre-renders pages in the background just as a users is entering a search query. These pages are the ones that Google feels quiet confident will be the ones users are looking for. This bring a whole new meaning to browser speed since the page seem to load instantly. This happens because of a technology called prerendering and the fundamental idea behind it is, a website might be able to predict with reasonable accuracy which wbepage a users is likely to click on next. So, before that user actually clicks on that page it is already on it's way. So when you actually click it, it seems to download instantly. So Google Chrome does all the work and fetches the sub-resources and does all the work necessary to display the page. Hence it loads instantaneously.

Although Chrome uses prerendering it is also available to any other website to use. Check out the video to know more. Please add your comments and suggestions.

An original post by

Sociolatte

How to clear your browser cache

What is cache?
Cache, pronounced cash, is a temporary storage place inside your computer.  Your cache stores the files that are downloaded when you visit sites on the internet. That way, when you return to a site at a later time, the system won't have to reload all of the information. Caching makes the site load into your browser more quickly.
Clearing your cache will make your system run faster and smoother. Internet pages will load faster. 

For Internet Explorer:
1. Launch Internet Explorer.
2. Select Tools > Internet Options.
3. Click the Delete button in the Browsing History section.
4. Click on Delete.
5. Close Internet Explorer and re-launch.
For Firefox:
1. Launch Firefox.
2. Select Tools > Clear Recent History.
3. In the Clear Recent History pop-up, select "everything" from the "time range to clear" menu.
4. Click on Clear Now.
5. Close Firefox and re-launch.

For Google Chrome:
1. Click on the Tools menu (the wrench in the upper-right corner).
2. Click on Clear browsing data.
3. Check the boxes for the types of information you wish to delete.
•Clear browsing history
•Clear download history
•Empty the cache
•Delete cookies
•Clear saved passwords
Note: You can also choose the period of time for which you wish to delete cached information using the "clear data from this period" dropdown menu.
4. Click on Clear Browsing Data.
5. Close and re-launch.
For Safari:
1. From the Safari menu, click Empty Cache
2. When asked:  “Are you sure you want to empty the cache?” click Empty.
3. From the Safari menu, click Preferences.
4. From the Security dialog box, click Bookmarks.
5. Click Show Cookies.
6. From the Cookie dialog box, click Remove All.
7. Click on Done
For Opera 9.x:
1. Select Tools > Preferences.
2. Select the Advanced tab.
3. Click History.
4. In the Disk cache section, click Empty Now.
5. Click OK to close Preferences.

[Image Courtesy Maximumpc.com]

An original post by

Sociolatte

Video: Google Speeds up Chrome

These speed tests were filmed at actual web page rendering times. If you're interested in the technical details, read on!

Equipment used:

- Computer: MacBook Pro laptop with Windows installed
- Monitor - 24" Asus: We had to replace the standard fluorescent backlight with very large tungsten fixtures to funnel in more light to capture the screen. In addition, we flipped the monitor 180 degrees to eliminate a shadow from the driver board and set the system preferences on the computer to rotate 180 degrees. No special software was used in this process.
- 15Mbps Internet connection.
- Camera: Phantom v640 High Speed Camera at 1920 x 1080, films up to 2700 fps


"Why does allrecipes.com in the potato gun sequence appear at once, and not the text first and images second? And why does it appear to render from bottom of the screen to the top?"

Chrome sends the rendered page to the video card buffer all at once, which is why allrecipes.com appears at once, and not with the text first and images second. Chrome actually paints the page from top to bottom, but to eliminate a shadow from the driver board, we had to flip the monitor upside down and set the system preferences in Windows to rotate everything 180 degrees, resulting in the page appearing to render from bottom to top.

"Why does the top one third of the page appear first on the weather.com page load?"

Sometimes only half the buffer gets filled before the video card sends its buffer over to the LCD panel. This is because Chrome on Windows uses GDI to draw, which does not do v-sync.

"The screen wipes are so smooth - how was that achieved?"

The screen wipes up in a gradated wipe because LCD pixels take around 10ms to flip and gradually change color.

We'll be releasing the results of these speed tests:
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/pe...

http://www.google.com/chrome

Source [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oarMXGq3gI ]

An original post by

Sociolatte