Sunday, February 14, 2010

How I get by almost perfectly with Chrome

You may have read that I <3 Mozilla Lab's Ubiquity. But in all honesty, My browsing experience has been simple and quite fast, since I switched to Chrome more than a week ago. Let's review what I need to add to it to be usable:


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From left to right, I added these extensions:

  • chrome currency converter: replaces all currency on the displayed page with the converted value in the currency of your choice. Click the coin to toggle that effect. It works perfectly!
  • autopagerize: works on some pages, like google search, and basically it keeps fething results when I reach the bottom of the page, instead of waiting for me to click the next button (who does that more than once a week, anyway??)
  • xmarks bookmark sync (they also have some search-related extensions, but i don't use them). I know chrome syncs with google bookmarks, but xmarks does it to firefox. and safari, too, making it possible to sync bookmarks on the iphone/ipod. (great!) now @google, when can i expect tags on my bookmarks? that is one feature that makes me launch firefox just to find out where i saw something whose name I can't remember but had to do with <tagname>..
  • proxy switchy! - i have to use my university proxy to access some bibliography-related resources. it works. 'nuff said.
  • AdBlock+. (others may prefer AdBlock - i still haven't made up my mind)This *had* to be there. I mean, we can make a style/userscript to remove certain things, but it's a lot more handier to just point and click on a div/table/image and *bamf*, gone forever. Who needs rotating/flashing/NSFWP banners? not me.
  • 1Password. this was another think I couldn't live without. I'd still be using Firefox if it weren't for this invaluable piece of software. Now be warned, its Chrome extensions isn't nearly as complete as the Firefox one. But it fills my passwords, at least. And that is all I care for now. (But I'll be looking forward for auto-filling, auto-submitting and the amazing Command+slash...)
  • shareaholic. there may be several (grouped or individual) extensions to perform these stuff. but shareaholic is complete, fast, sleek and very useful. even if i just click on it once a month, it'll make my task a bit faster and painless. so it's worth it.
  • facebook for google chrome. does it need a description? notifications, wall, etc. and allows to make posts and comments/likes. it does its job, well enough.
  • diigo. I keep some notes on scattered web places, and diigo has been handy. the extensions is better (and smaller, space-wise) than the bookmarklet. yay.
  • chromed bird. remember what i told you about facebook for chrome? read it again, replace facebook with twitter. there you have it. it works. perfect for the casual twitter, or for a quick post (remember, i used ubiquity. if someone has a working twitter quicksilver plugin, i'd be all ears...)
  • chromy. gets your bookmarks in a vertical menu, with a toolbar with scripts to add to evernote, lookup somewhere, translate, etc. it's still on probation on my setup, beacuse I haven't used it after getting it installed and configured. looked great as a concept, though... :)
  • feedly. welcome back to my life. i missed you. you're prettier, fancier, more usable and more usefull than google reader - or any other rss reader i've used so far. I'd stopped using you when you clashed with some firefox nightly builds features, but with chrome you seem to be working great. so thank you for that!

And that's about it. i have some more usercripts and bookmarklets to simple stuff (multiple columns on google, images lightbox, an overlay with selection translation to english, a design set of tools, with grids, rulers, etc). And everything works. Wait, did I mention that www.youtube.com/html5 experience works on Chrome, but not on Firefox? Yeah, that means no more Flash on YouTube. That also turned my head.

So, my dear Firefox, this is a (at least temporary) goodbye. We'll see each other again on compatibility checks on my web design experiences, or after you decide to put more effort on Ubiquity's support. Ta ta.