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Probably one of the biggest complaints (or benefits, depending on who you ask) with Chrome is the browser's minimalistic interface. There just isn't much to look at, and quite frankly, it's bland. That might be okay in some circumstances, but if you've taken the time to deck out your desktop (like we showed you in our Rainmeter guide), then why not spend some time getting your browser to match?
Applying a theme couldn't be easier. Just head over to Chrome's Themes Gallery, browser around, and mash whichever 'Apply theme' suits you.
Don't be bashful about trying out different looks. If you don't like, just hit the Undo button that appears immediately after installing a theme. If you've already closed the box and/or want to revert back to the default look, navigate to Tools>Options, select the Personal Stuff tab, and press 'Reset to default theme.'
While you're browsing themes, be sure to also check out www.chromethemes.org for even more great looks.
Whenever your system starts to feel sluggish, one of the first things you do is hit up the Task manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) so you can audit every process and piece of software that's running. But did you know that Chrome comes with its own Task Manager?
It does, and it's pretty informative. To access it, just press Shift+Esc. By default, you'll be shown a basic view of running Chrome processes and how much memory and CPU percentage each one is using, as well some network stats. If you run into a problematic plugin or tab that's simply taking up too much memory, just press the End process button.
While pretty basic at first glance, Chrome's built-in Task Manager contains a few hidden monitors that can come in handy. Right-click anywhere in the Task Manager window and choose to display or hide Image Cache, Script Cache, JavaScript Memory, and a handful of others.
For even more details, press the 'Stats for nerds' URL in the lower left corner, which brings up an about:memory page.
Don't worry, we're not about to toss our morals off the Golden Gate Bridge and show you how to hack someone else's site, at least not in the way you might think. We are, however, going to show you how to edit any website in cyberspace, whether you're the rightful owner or not, except the changes will only be visible on your end.
To edit someone's website locally, simply right-click any part of the page you want to alter and select Inspect Element. This brings up a window in which you're then able to inspect, edit, and debug various components, such as HTML code, CSS, or JavaScript. Anyone experienced with Web design will feel right at home, but the interface can be more than a little overwhelming if you're not a code junkie.
What's cool about the Elements tab is that any changes you make appear on the webpage in real time. But developers and webmasters will also find loads of value in the Resources tab, which reveals the resource consumption of each element.
Comments are closed on this article
madhuri
January 30, 2012 at 3:51am
I really enjoyed this post. You describe this topic very well. I really enjoy reading your blog and I will definitely bookmark it! Keep up the interesting posts!
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nimd4
December 29, 2011 at 9:12pm
"Another handy feature in Chrome, and that one that isn't duplicated in Firefox (not out of the box, anyway) [..]"
Just btw., this has been made a feature of Firefox: Paste & Go
=)
PS. Another comment below mentioned reliability, to be able to select Firefox crash recovery set the option browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes to "0" from the about:config page (this, however, messes with the Firefox App Tabs feature :))
niksharma
December 05, 2011 at 6:22am
Well Very good list of shortcuts is here, but most of the shortcuts of Chrome are similar to that of Mozilla. mhada, Web Design Manchester | Web Design Bedfordshire Telford
Boki
November 02, 2011 at 12:52pm
I like Chrome a lot! It's faster and more reliable. Also, Chrome has some great addons.
izmirescort
October 02, 2011 at 8:39am
Is there a Firefox add-on that enables multiple homepages? I like the idea. I would just up and try Chrome but with my tech not so savy girlfriend sharing my PC NoScript is a amk link eklemedik D:
Ultrasound Tech...
August 29, 2011 at 3:54am
Before, I always use firefox. But since I noticed that it really takes time to load the data and some website information, I downloaded the Chrome and really found new features. And besides, I agree it was really faster than firefox.
Nickgrnt
June 19, 2011 at 12:12am
In market, there is no other browser that can compete with Firefox. Though few upgrades has been released to make Google Chrome more efficient and effective, but I believe that 80% people on Internet must be using the Firefox browser. As it has thousands of add-ons to add to the browser which is the plus point of Firefox, whereas Google chrome doesn't have much effective add-ons as Firefox have it.
deanameske
March 25, 2011 at 12:49am
Im satisfied with the performance of chrome. It works fine with all emails.
mert34
March 09, 2011 at 10:17am
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March 03, 2011 at 3:42am
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Asterixx
March 07, 2010 at 5:24pm
Nunc est bibendum!
I know I'm a bit late to this party, but I just thought I'd toss a comment in about Adblock. There are two very legitimate uses for Adblock, booth of which I have experienced:
Dialup connections. I live in the boonies where high speed internet is not available. I suffered the internet at about 44kbps for about four years, and when you're surfing at that speed every byte hurts. Adblock helps by eliminating unneccesary data (I actually used it to block website header images in addition to advertising). Flashblock and Noscript also made the suffering a bit more endurable.
Pay-per-use data. I could not stand dialup another second, and since I live in a 3G covberage area I got an internet stick (which is why I am late to this party: The "features" section was too painful via dialup). It works great (my speeds average 5MBPS) but it is pay per use. My basic plan is $35/month for up to 500MB, and it goes up in steps by 500MB blocks of data to a peak of $90 for 5GB (plus a nickel for each additional MB after 5GB). Obviously bittorrent is out of my reach right now, but so is wasting valuable bandwidth on advertsing. I need every available kilobyte to be reserved for actual content.
To0nces
February 22, 2010 at 2:38pm
Will not switch to Chrome until 2 things happen.
1). NoScript. I will not use it without a NoScript extension. AdBlock is great, but not a replacement for NoScript. Yes, I read about the developer build disabling all javascript, but typing in every website manually to whitelist? That is pretty cumbersome. Not to mention NoScript actually blocks a lot more than just javascript.
2). They NEED a Master Password desparately. I'm not saving a single password in Chrome if anybody can just open up Chrome and view them as plain text in the options. I would think this would be extremely easy to implement, but has been a failing of Chrome since its inception.
Chrome works a lot faster than FF for me, but these are 2 must have additions for me, and are deal breakers.
JpJ808
February 21, 2010 at 4:45pm
Here is a much easier way to create a new profile for Chrome in XP (and with minimal tweaking, the other OS's as well):
1. Copy, paste, and rename the Chrome Shortcut on your Desktop or Start Menu.
2. In the Target, copy and paste the following:
"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -user-data-dir="C:\Documents and Settings\[USER NAME]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\[PROFILE NAME]"
3. Change the information in the brackets and possibly the drive letter if Chrome is elsewhere. (The "Start in" location won't need to be changed, and should match the directories leading to chrome.exe above if you're lost.)
4. Chrome will create a new clean directory with the essential files using the name you provided in [PROFILE NAME], and you will have a fresh start: you may drag any bookmarks you need from the Chrome opened with the former shortcut to the Chrome opened with the new shortcut.
beeky 1000
February 19, 2010 at 7:44pm
I figured it out!!! I think chrome is just as good as firefox if not better
JT
beeky 1000
February 19, 2010 at 3:31pm
For some reason when I try to do the diffrent user profile thing when I get to entering the target it keeps saying an error mesage
help please!!!
jt
gcstang
February 19, 2010 at 5:39am
I love the speed of the browser and some of the features but they pushed 4.x out way to fast and there are a lot of issues with showing sites. Chrome even has issues showing their own GWT based web applications in a consistant manner when run through an Apache server, it's not like Apache isn't a known Web Server. Looks like I'll stick with 3.x for a while or FF (which is dependable, even if it's slow)
Stry8993
February 18, 2010 at 8:06pm
I just don't like the look of Chrome. Its too, stuck up looking. Like a Mac almost. That, and it loads just as fast as Firefox does for me. I'm happy. Been using FF since 0.8, and I've had no issues. And as for the RAM leak issues, man... thats harsh. Over a gig! :O
Paul_Lilly
February 19, 2010 at 8:34am
You betcha. I'm finding that heavy Web browsing really takes a toll on Firefox if you leave it open for a length of time.
-Paul Lilly
ElectricJazz
February 18, 2010 at 12:57pm
I am not leaving Firefox until Chrome wakes the hell up and supports Google Toolbar.
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Maybe you gots ta do something for me, I gots needs too you know. - The Spirit of Jazz.
JpJ808
February 21, 2010 at 4:41pm
That's the beauty of Chrome: there aren't a bunch of toolbars cluttering up the top half of your screen, and everything you need is still there. I suggest customizing your bookmarks instead of downloading extra toolbars. (Ctrl+B will toggle the Bookmarks Bar for you.)
eetrinko
February 18, 2010 at 8:02am
No way dude, nothing can tough FIreFox! Not even close.
Jess
www.privacy-tools.de.tc
JohnP
February 17, 2010 at 10:43pm
So far, Roboform only works using their online Sync method. Pain every time I go to log on somewhere. Until that is fixed, FF...
Mr_Histamine
February 17, 2010 at 5:08pm
This is the best feature by far; although, if they made it auto pin once you've reached a certain number of tabs, that'd make it even better!
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Please deposit your pride, life, and other garbage in the receptacles at the back of the theater before you leave. Thanks!
Walnut
February 17, 2010 at 2:33pm
I've been using Chrome since shortly after launch, and recently upgraded Firefox to do some work related stuff. I just can't stand it. It's bizarre because I used FF for years and years, but I just can't deal with its quirks anymore. Tabs load in slow motion and grind the whole browser to a halt. It generally uses about the same amount of memory as Chrome, but Chrome just flies. And I caught Firefox chugging down over a gig of memory not once but TWICE in the past week. I really thought they would have fixed those memory leaks.
mkarias1
February 17, 2010 at 11:35am
I am sticking with Firefox. Funny that I get a "This Webpage is not available" when I try to get the Add-Ons in this article. Yet it works fine in Firefox.
Also, my Yahoo Mail login page does not work in Chrome. Why? Guess Google doesn't want people to use any other email service except Gmail.
Also, I really do not find a big difference in memory usage between Chrome & Firefox.
Right now Firefox is using 115 MB of RAM while Chrome is using 140 MB.
Not impressed by Chrome at all.
JMember
March 03, 2010 at 3:41pm
That's cuz you always have in your mind : "Firefox is the best", without knowing reality.
murixbob
February 16, 2010 at 10:04pm
Chrome still lacks one important feature added in Firefox 3: tags for bookmarks
When you have a bunch of bookmarks or can't remeber the url / title you had for the bookmark, tags are a Godsend.
Having multiple tabs on firefox is just as easy as chromes. You just have to seperate use tab with a | (not an i) .
Firefox also is much easier at adding a keyword search. You just have to right click a search box on the website you want to make a keword for and select add a keyword for this search. Then it has a normal bookmark information along with a keyword you want to set for it.
mzupan
February 16, 2010 at 8:17pm
I want to switch to Chrome, but the one thing that keeps me from doing so is the one thing that I thought would be a no-brainer for the development team when I first heard of Google Chrome.... Google Bookmarks.
Sure, you can sync Chrome bookmarks with another Chrome browser, but I want my Google Bookmarks built into Chrome so that I can easily access my bookmarks from any brower, not just Chrome. I've been doing this for years with Google Toolbar on IE and Firefox, and on both PC and Mac platforms.
I would jump ship to Chrome and also recommend it to my family and friends once they implement that. But if I can't access my bookmarks from any computer that may or may not have Chrome installed then it's just not going to happen anytime soon.
DOOMHAMMA
February 16, 2010 at 6:56pm
Maximum PC actually mentioned AdBlock for once! +10 points for MaxPC! It's been the main reason I have not switched to Chrome yet (and my system can easily stomach the memory issues).
The way Chrome handles bookmarks also annoys me, but after reading through this article, you may have a convert here!
CTskifreak
February 16, 2010 at 6:51pm
One addon I wish they mentioned more was the Xmarks addon for bookmark syncing. That way you can sync between browsers and computers. So handy. Also running AdBlock, Forecastfox Weather, IE Tab, One Number and Speed Dial.
jscarpe
February 16, 2010 at 6:44pm
Chrome is a fine browser, but i still can't stand the way that it and Safari handle bookmarks. I don't really want to have to use the address bar to search for my bookmark; I want a bookmark bar on the side so i can scroll through them. I bookmark too many pages inside sites to make the search feature work for me. Of course, I'm so used to Opera and its quirks I can't imagine dumping it; but Chrome has no chance with the way it handles bookmarks.
