Optimizing Your Google Chrome Experience
The internet has become one of the biggest tools we use in our everyday lives, and what browser we use is how we experience everything the web has to offer. Google Chrome is one of the biggest and best browsers out now but like every other browser, it does have its issues. Here are a couple of extensions or plugins to help make your experience using Chrome even better. Also, above the description for these extensions is a link to download these from the Google Chrome store. It is also worth pointing out that even though this is a post for Google Chrome, a few of these can be used with browsers like Mozilla’s FireFox, too.
The Great Suspender
When extra tabs are open on Google Chrome, it can really eat up your RAM. What this extension does is after a set amount of time (the default is 1 hour) it will release the ram back to your system to be used for other tasks. Users have reported this extension saving them almost 60% of the amount of RAM Chrome would normally keep in use. To use this extension, when you have a tab you want to suspend, just click the tab and then click the icon for Suspender, then a drop-down box will come up with the option to Suspend this tab; click that, then you are all set to go.
AdBlock
The AdBlock extension does exactly as the name implies, “It Blocks Ads.” No more annoying pop-ups or having adds all over your webpage. This extension is as easy to use as it is to install. There are some site out there now that will block you if you have a type of ad blocker, but you can turn off AdBlock for certain sites by clicking the whitelist button on AdBlock while on the page you want whitelisted.
Data Saver
With some internet service providers, you might be fighting against a data-limit cap, and an extension like Data Saver can help. What this extension does is use Google’s servers to compress the web data before it gets to you and lowering the amount of unnecessary bandwidth. If the webpage is encrypted the page will not be compressed. There is also a “Details” button that you can access to give you more info on the data that you are using, allowing you to make more informed decisions on your usage based on the type of connection you are using.
LastPass
By now, most people have way too many accounts and passwords to remember. With this extension, LastPass takes care of remembering all of those accounts and passwords, and you only need to remember one password to get into your LastPass account. LastPass also offers a desktop and mobile application, allowing you to sync your passwords across your devices with relative ease. The best part, though, is that LastPass will generate cryptographically-secure passwords for you and input them at the touch of a button, so if you really don’t want to remember your passwords or worry about someone else figuring them out, LastPass has you covered.
IE Tab
Even today, there are still some websites out there that only work using IE (Internet Explorer). With the IE Tab extension, now you can use the IE rendering engine inside Chrome, which allows you to visit these sites using Chrome. Now, there is no need to open up another browser to use IE which is one of the most insecure web browsers out there.
Magic Actions for Youtube
YouTube is one of the biggest websites that we all use on regular basis and this extension can greatly increase your experience on YouTube using Chrome. Here are some of the features of this extension has to offer: Mouse wheel volume control—this allows you to control the volume of the video by scrolling the mouse wheel up and down; Cinema Mode—this mode allows you to add a shader to the video to give it a more of a movie theater look; and One click snapshot—this allows you to take screenshots of the video you are watching and save them as PNG, JPEG, or WEBP image formats.
These are just a few of the many extensions that you can get off of the Google Chrome Web Store. It is also important to remember as great as a lot of these extensions sound, you do not want to run a lot of extensions at one time. Running too many at one time can really slow down your browser and give you a not so happy experience online.