20 Instant Upgrades to Make Chrome Better than Firefox

Posted 02/16/2010 at 7:00pm | by Paul Lilly

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Set up and Manage Multiple Profiles

There are few different reasons for wanting to create separate profiles in Chrome. For one, maybe you have a hankering for, um, 'entertaining' sites, but you don't want the URLs to show up as search suggestions when someone else is using the PC. Yes, that's what Incognito mode is for (well, one of the things), but not everyone wants to load up a stealthy browser just for certain sites. On top of that, once you exit Incognito, all your history for that session is gone, not just the illicit variety.

Another reason for separate profiles is simply to stay organized. If your kids use your PC, do you really want Chrome suggesting Sponge Bob and Twilight links when you're surfing the Web? Probably not, and the more people you let use your PC, the harder it is to sift through your history when you want to find a specific link.

Ready to create a profile? You'll need to navigate to Chrome's User Data folder on your hard drive. Depending on which OS you own, you'll find this folder by navigating to:

Windows XP*
C:\Document and Settings\[USERNAME]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data

Windows Vista and Windows 7*
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data

*Note that you may need to enable viewing hidden files and folders. Open up My Computer, press Alt, and select Tools>Folder Options. Select the View tab and check the 'Show hidden files, folders, and drives' radio button.

Next, make a copy of the Default folder in the above location. Just right-click and select copy, and then paste it into the same directory. To save space, and to give the new profile a fresh start, it's a good idea to clear your browser cache before doing this.

When you paste the copied folder, Windows will name it Default - Copy, or something similar. Go ahead and rename this to whatever you want to call your new profile (right-click, rename). When you're finished, navigate back to Chrome's Application Data folder (or Application on Vista and Windows 7). Right-click chrome.exe and select Create Shortcut.

Right-click the new shortcut you just created and select Properties. Bring up the Shortcut tab, and in the Target field, cut/paste the following:

Windows XP
C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe –user-data-dir="..\User Data\[PROFILE NAME] "

Windows Vista and Windows 7
C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application \chrome.exe –user-data-dir="..\User Data\[PROFILE NAME] "

Save the changes and then drag the new shortcut to your desktop, and be sure to rename it so you can keep track of which shortcut launches your profile.

If you don't want to go through all that trouble of creating a new profile, there's a free program called Google Chrome Backup (not affiliated with Google) that streamlines the process. You can also use this to backup and restore profiles, and all with just a few self-explanatory mouse clicks. You can download the program here.

Get Familiar with About: Pages

Special About pages are nothing new when it comes to browsers, and while Chrome doesn't have a tweakable about:config page like Firefox does, there are plenty of other commands recognized by Chrome. To access them, you type the command in the Ominbar just like you would a Web address. Here are some of the more useful ones.

About:DNS

One of the things that helps give Chrome its zip is a feature called DSN prefetching, or otherwise known as pre-resolving. The idea here is that rather than wait for DNS to resolve domain names, Chrome takes a proactive approach by resolving domain names while a user views a webpage. According to Google, this can result in an average of 250ms faster load times when first visiting a domain than with traditional browser.

Type about:dns into the Omnibar allows you see data about which sites are cached and how many of them have benefited from this technique.

About:Cache

This one lists all the items contained in Chrome's cache, with each one hyperlinked.

About:Memory

Need proof that Firefox's well-documented memory leak still exists? There are several ways to get it, including typing about:memory in Chromes Omnibar. Doing so brings up a page displaying all kinds of memory stats, such as how much total RAM Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers are chewing up, as well as breaks down Chrome's individual processes and tabs.

About:Plugins

Displays a list of installed plugins, like Silverlight, QuickTime, Winamp, Hulu Desktop, and any others. Also tells you which ones are enabled, and some of them include short descriptions.

About:Version

Just like the 'About Google Chrome' link accessible via the Tools menu, only more detailed. In addition to the overall browser version, this also displays the WebKit version and V8 engine info.

There are a handful of other About pages to play around with, including:

About:Stats
About:Network
About:Crash
About:Internets (Windows XP only)