Chrome Tips 'n Tricks

Okay, this is my tips ‘n tricks guide to Google Chrome. If you’re reading this because you are going to switch from Firefox to Chrome, you probably want to know about the Chrome Web Store (https://chrome.google.com/webstore). It’s the place to find themes, apps, and extensions for Chrome. I am not saying that every extension you had on Firefox is on Chrome (yet), but there’s still a good selection. Speaking of extensions, the extension management page can be found by typing “chrome://extensions/” into the address bar. Chrome has lots of pages like that, including chrome://history/, chrome://downloads/, and chrome://bookmarks/.

Here are some useful key combos:

·         Ctrl + Shift + T will re-open the last tab you closed

·         Ctrl + Tab will cycle to the next tab you have open

·         Ctrl + Shift + Tab will go back a tab

·         Ctrl + W will close the current tab

·         Ctrl + L will select everything in the address bar

Those are just the ones that I use a lot and find helpful. There are plenty more, and they can be found by using Google (imagine that).

Now onto the tricks part. There’s a very neat page called chrome://flags/ that has experimental features that are still being tested and tweaked. If you’re using the stable build of Chrome (chances are, you are), most, if not all, of the experiments are safe. I have one enabled that allows me to hide the address bar to save space on my netbook’s screen. If you enable one or more, chances are you’ll have to relaunch Chrome. To do that safely, just go to the bottom of the page and click the “Relaunch now” button.

 Let me now explain Chrome apps a little more. Most of the “apps” in the Chrome Web Store are just shortcuts that appear in the “Apps” section of the new tab page. There’s really not too much to them. That said, I can make a how-to on making your own custom apps to put on the new tab page.

I’m not sure if Firefox has this next little quirk, but I know Internet Explorer does. You know how in Windows 7, if you leave your cursor over a program icon on the taskbar for a few seconds, a little window pops up that shows what the program looks like? Well, that’s called Aero Peek. In Internet Explorer, each tab has its own little preview window in Aero Peek. If you like that idea (instead of just having one preview window showing the tab you’re in), then you can add this to the back of the shortcut “Target” (if you right-click the Chrome shortcut and click Properties, you should see a box that says “Target”): [space]--enable-aero-peek-tabs To disable the feature, just remove that from the shortcut.

That’s about all I can think of in the means of tips ‘n tricks. But this is by far nowehere near everything you can do to Chrome. Just Google “Chrome tricks” or something like that, and you’ll find tons more stuff. This is just what I’ve used and find helpful. Hope you liked it.

MINECRAFT 1.8.1

The latest update to Minecraft was released earlier this week: Minecraft Beta 1.8.1, or the “Adventure Update.” It’s called that because everything added is meant to increase the desire to go out and actually explore and do combat; it’s promoting adventuring, basically. Of those additions include a food bar, and sprinting. When you sprint, your food bar depletes. To replenish your food bar, just eat a variety of foods (old and newly added). Also, when the food bar is full, your health is regained over time. Some new food that was added would be watermelons, raw & cooked chicken (from killing a chicken), raw & cooked beef (from killing a cow), and raw flesh (zombies drop it). I wouldn’t eat the last one, though, because it ends up poisoning you and nearly emptying your food bar. Something else that’s new that makes getting some of that new food harder is that passive mobs, like cows and sheep, run away from you when you attack them. Actual combat has been improved: swords can now block by holding down right-click, bows & arrows charge up before firing, critical hits are scored if you hit something while descending from a jump, and mobs drop experience orbs that are collected to fill up an exp. bar. There’s no real use for it for now, says Mojang. Other neat things that were added were iron bars and window panes, vines (in jungle biomes), giant mushrooms, abandoned mines, strongholds, and randomly generated villages. The changed stuff includes lighting (not only from torches, but the day/night transition is much smoother) and how large biomes have to be (so you don’t find a 12x12 desert in the middle of a forest). I can’t play this update on my netbook because it’s too wimpy, but I have been playing at school and have brought back some screenshots:

Step back, Microsoft

I'm not the richest kid around. In fact, I never really have a spending budget most of the time. But, about a year and a half ago, I did have a couple hundred dollars to spend. So, I bought a netbook. Seemed like a good idea at the time: I wasn't planning on doing any major processes, just typing stuff up for school and maybe a game of Total Annihilation (strategy game from the 90s, so I figured a shrimpy processor and graphics accelerator would do fine). What I didn't read was the fine print, which said that it came with Windows 7 Starter edition, which meant that there was zero personalization options included. I couldn't even change the background. Every other version of Windows 7 came with a nice fancy customization suite called Aero. I basically made everything look nice and glassy. I envied that feature for one and a half years. And last night,

Windows 8 (a GameBoy)

Props if you got the title joke. If not, pronounce it. Windows 8 looks like it swallowed a GameBoy or some old portable game system, because IT’S ALL JUST COLORED BOXES! Before I go too much further, I guess I should say that Windows 8 developer preview was released earlier this week. (The developer preview is for developers to start playing around with Windows 8 so they can make programs for it.) From what I’ve seen, I’m not impressed at all. Microsoft has gone and turned Windows 8 into a half-tablet and half-smartphone OS. Thankfully, they did leave the normal Windows environment that the power users all know and love, but it’s been boxed into an “app” and thrown in a corner marked DO NOT TOUCH. Not really, but that’s the way I see it. The desktop as we know it is now an app. That being said, all the features of Windows 7 and before are hidden away in that app, and I sure hope there’s some way to disable that goofy “Start screen” that seems to be Win8’s new flagship feature. That environment is meant either for a tablet device or a smartphone, not a mouse. I’ve seen videos of people trying to navigate the Start screen, along with the new method of application switching and the “charms” menu, using a keyboard and mouse, and it’s pitiful. Microsoft tried to sell Windows 7 (clearly a computer OS) as a tablet OS. Now, they’re trying to sell Windows 8 (tablet-ish OS) as a computer OS. Rubbish. They need what Apple has: a computer OS and a tablet OS. Mac OSX wouldn’t belong on an iPad (it barely belongs on computers), and iOS wouldn’t belong on a computer. I’m not the first person to say that, either, and by far. People have also brought up that Windows is big in the business world. What are business folk going to do with stupid flashy tiles and the like? It isn’t meant for business multitasking at all. If I were someone who’s used Windows all my life for getting things done and not having fun and messing around, I’d figure out how to ditch the Start screen and just stick with the applicationized desktop. I wish that the Start screen would just be an addition instead of a reworking of the main UI. Microsoft has gotten a little bit of work done on the desktop, however. Task Manager has been upgraded into something a normal user might understand (if a normal user manages to find their way to the desktop and launch Task Manager). The ribbon UI has been added to Explorer, as well. I wasn’t a big fan of the ribbons at first, but they’ve grown on me. Apparently, IE10 on the desktop is supposed to be better, but I heard that about IE9 and wanted to physically shoot the icon off my desktop. I really hope that Microsoft figures out a way to turn Windows 8 into a respectable, usable computer OS.

Some new blogging tools

As I mentioned on my normal blog recently, I’ve got some new blogging tools! I’ll try to make this as review-y yet enjoyable as possible. First is Google’s official Blogger app for the iOS App Store. Lots of people, including myself, had been waiting for just this app. To start off, the UI is Blogger-orange, which can get to be a little bit overpowering.