20 Instant Upgrades to Make Chrome Better than Firefox

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

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Change the Number of Search Suggestions (or Disable Them Completely)

Whenever you type in Chrome's Omnibar, the browser 'suggests' sites that are similar to what it thinks you're typing, which is based partially on your search history. It's not hard to see how this could turn into an awkward situation if someone else is sitting next to you while you surf the Web. To disable Chrome's Search Suggestion feature, click on Tools>Options. Bring up the Under the Hood tab and deselect the 'Use a suggestion service...' checkbox.

On the other end of the spectrum, you may feel that Chrome doesn't serve up enough suggestions. There's no integrated way to change this, but you can take matters into your own hands using a startup switch (see the section about startup switches earlier in this guide).

Find Chrome's startup icon on your desktop or taskbar, and then right-click and select Properties. Make sure the Shortcut tab is selected. In the target box, append -ominibox-popup-count=xx, replacing xx with the number of suggestions you want to appear. The final result should look something like this:

C:\Users\Paul\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\ -omnibox-popup-count=35

Customize Chrome with these Five Awesome Add-Ons

We don't know why it took so long for Google to add official extensions support for Chrome, but now that they have, we couldn't be happier. Mozilla? Probably not so much. The lack of extensions is a major reason why many users just couldn't bring themselves to make the switch, but now that the door has been opened, expect a flood of add-ons, just like what happened with Firefox. And the coolest part about all this is you don't even need to restart Chrome for extensions to take effect - groovy! Here are some we just can't live without.

Chrome Gestures

Better known as 'mouse gestures,' Chrome gestures is Chrome's equivalent, and it's just as awesome here as it is on any other browser. This should be on everyone's install list.

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IE Tab

As much we like Chrome, there are still some webpages that will only work correctly in Internet Explorer. But rather than resort to loading up IE, this extension allows you to load the page with IE, but in a separate tab within Chrome. In other words, you're getting the best of worlds!

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Tab Sync

Sometimes 5 o'clock rolls around way too early. Maybe you're waist deep in a super important project for work, or perhaps you were in the middle of an entertaining article, but it's time to go. One solution is to bookmark all of your open tabs, enable bookmark syncing, and then load them up one-by-one when you get home. Or you could install Tab Sync. Just as the name implies, this handy add-on syncs all of your open tabs. Just click the button and you're good to go.

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The Camelizer

Shop more intelligently with the Camelizer add-on. Camelizer tracks product price changes and works a variety of popular e-tailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, Overstock, and a few others. It will tell you what the lowest price for a product was, how recently it was marked that low, and other helpful stats to make sure you're not overpaying.

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Tab Menu

Extremely handy for anyone who often loads more than 10 tabs at a time, and the more tabs you have open, the more use you'll get out of this one. Easily perform functions like select, close, rearrange, find, and more, and do it with a convenient pull-down menu.

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