Omnibox Prerendering basically preloads some of the pages that are presented to you in the browser’s address bar. This reduces the time between hitting the Enter key on the keyboard and seeing the page fully rendered in the browser window. It is not clear how Chrome selects those pages, but it is likely that your previous browsing history and bookmarks may have something to do with it. This does create some overhead though, especially if the browser does not select the right pages that often.

Chrome users who do not want or need the prerendering feature can disable it in the following way:

• Open chrome://flags/ in the Chrome address bar and hit enter.
• Locate the flag Prerender from omnibox and change the feature’s state to disabled.



The second new feature is the automatic scanning of executable files like exe or msi in Chrome to warn you if you are downloading a malicious file or a file from a host that is know to host a high percentage of malicious downloads.

Google maintains a whitelist of files that are not checked. All other files are checked with Google to retrieve more information. While not a fail safe approach, it can warn users if they are about to download known malicious files. The concept looks similar to Microsoft’s SmartScreen Filter. It does not seem possible to disable the feature right now in the browser.

In addition, a total of 20 security vulnerabilities were closed in Chrome 17 of which one received the highest possible severity rating of critical.

You can read up on the changes at the official Chrome Release blog. Chrome updates should already been applied to existing Chrome Stable installations. You can verify the version with a click on Wrench > About Google Chrome. There you can also download and apply the update if the browser has not been updated yet.

Google is about to launch Screenwise, a project that allows them to monitor the sites users visit and how they use them. For that, participating users get paid up to $25 in gift cards over the course of a year. Users who sign up get a $5 Amazon gift card right away, and then additional $5 gift cards for every three months they stay in the project.

According to the information posted on the Screenwise Landing panel, Google attempts to use the information to “improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone”.

Participating users need to download the Google Screenwise browser extension for the Chrome web browser and use the browser for their Internet activities. Eligible are Google account users who are at least 13 years of age. Google notes on the page that the company will not save user email addresses, or “associate it with any other personally identifiable information”.

Google has partnered up with Knowledge Networks, a research company that specializes in Internet research.

Interested users can submit their email address to receive notifications when registration opens. According to the landing page information, users will receive participation information in the coming days.

The process, even though opt-in, will certainly face its share of criticism, especially since Google is currently already facing public pressure over their privacy policy and terms of service changes.

The question is, how many users are willing to give up their privacy for 12 months for $25 in Amazon gift certificates? What’s your take on this?

Android users can download Chrome Beta from Android Market, where it is available for download. A version of the browser has also been downloaded and made available again by members of the XDA-Developer forum.

Chrome for Android Beta ships with some Chrome desktop features, including the browser’s omnibox to search and navigate directly from the browser’s address bar, a tab driven interface, and the private browsing mode (incognito mode). Other features of the desktop version, like themes and extensions support are currently not available in the beta client.

Chrome for Android furthermore synchronizes bookmarks and open tabs with desktop versions.For synchronization to work, you need to sign in to Chrome on all devices that you want to synchronize.

The mobile version of Chrome introduces several device specific features. This includes options to flip through all open tabs with a swipe, or the new link zooming feature that makes the selection of links more comfortable in the mobile browser.

Google has released a video that introduces the Chrome for Android beta version. The video demonstrates the tab swiping capabilities of the browser among other things.

Most user comments on Android Market, Google Plus and other announcement locations are quite positive. The average rating currently on Android market is 4.3. Critics have pointed out that Chrome for Android does not support Flash, and that it is not possible to switch to the desktop version of a site if available. Positive aspects are speed mainly and the synchronization of tabs and bookmarks.

Google plans to release the mobile browser in other countries in the near future. It is not clear at this point in time if pre-Android 4.0 devices will also be able to download and install the browser. (via Caschy)

Have you played around with Chrome for Android yet? Let me know what you think of this initial release in the comments.

This all in all turned out to waste more than 2 Gigabytes of space on my previous SSD which I could not use for other tasks instead.

Having to open the directory manually regularly is without doubt not the best way of handling the issue. Since Chrome is updating fairly regularly, you might have to check every month or so to delete unneeded versions of the browser from your hard drive.

Old Chrome Remover is a free program for the Windows operating system that can remove old versions of the Google Browser automatically from the system. It will automatically check for Chrome installations on the system when run and display all old version in a window afterwards.

The application supports not only Chrome Stable installations but also other Chrome installations including cutting edge Canary builds. Please note that it will display and offer to delete all old versions from the hard drive, with no option to manually select the versions you want deleted.

You need to press the Y key on the keyword to have the program delete all outdated Chrome installations on the system. If you do not want that you can press any other key to leave everything as is. You need to close all instances of the Chrome browser prior to deleting the old Chrome folders on the system. You will receive an access denied error message otherwise. The program needs to be run with elevated privileges under Vista and Windows 7.

Note that you should not run the tool if you have multiple Chrome channels installed on your system, as it will delete ALL old instances which means that you will end up with only one working version of Chrome (this happened on my system where I was running Dev and Canary builds of the browser. After running the tool, only the Canary build was still available, while the Dev build was not).

Old Chrome Remover is therefor only an option if you are running one version of Chrome on your system. Advanced users can use the /AUTO parameter to run the program silently.

Interested users can download Old Chrome Remover from Shane Gowlands website. Please note that the program requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 to work. (via JKWebTalks)

Every now and then I encounter words or phrases in articles on the Internet that I would have a hard time pronouncing, and while I often pick the most likely variant, I sometimes would like to find out if what I picked is the correct pronunciation of the word or phrase.

Enter How Do You Say for the Google Chrome browser. The free extension offers to pronounce word, phrases and even sentences that you either enter manually or highlight on the active web page.

The extension is set to passive mode upon installation, which means that you need to enter words in the extension interface. This is done with a click on the icon in the address bar, entering the word or phrase that you’d like pronounced and a click on the play button.

Please note that you can only get the software to pronounce words that it has saved in its database, it will remain silent if you enter a word that is not saved there. This is for instance the case with many names or places.

More comfortable than the manual option is the automatic word pronunciation option. You need to enable it first for the page you are own. The extension will from that moment on pronounce every word that you are highlighting on the page.

You can alternatively use the shortcut Alt-X to enable or disable the automatic option.

The pronunciations are solid and spoken with a somewhat mechanical voice. Probably the biggest issue of the program is that automatic pronunciation needs to be enabled on a per-page basis. It is for instance not possible to enable the automatic feature for all pages of a domain.

Google Chrome users who would like a pronunciation aid can download the extension from the official Chrome Web Store.

You can obviously just fire up your email client manually, copy and paste the link and/or description, enter the recipient’s email addresses before sending the email. While that’s a practicable solution, it quickly becomes a nuisance if you happen to email pages quite often.

Google’s Email This Page extension for the Chrome browser offers a much simpler solution that automates part of the workflow. The extension adds a single button to the Chrome address bar. A left-click on the button launches a new email draft in the system’s default email client with the web address of the site you want to share already filled out automatically.

All it takes now is to add one or multiple recipients, a subject, and if you desire additional body text.

This works not only on http websites but also https sites and even internal chrome pages.

The extension ships with a single option, allowing users to change the default email handler to Gmail. This is the only web mail provider supported by Google’s extension.

The extension description states that the extension will not only add the web address to the body text of the email, but that it will furthermore use the page title as the email subject. This did not work during tests. Both Thunderbird and Gmail showed a blank subject line on the write email page.

Email This Page improves the workflow slightly. It can be an interesting option for users who use a desktop client as their default email client but want to send pages with Google Mail. Chrome users can download Email this page from the official Google Chrome web store.

A panic button or boss key application performs one or multiple actions when the button is activated. This usually includes hiding a window, but sometimes other things such as muting the volume.

The Google Chrome extension PanicButton adds the functionality to the Chrome browser. It basically allows you to hide all open Chrome tabs with a single click.

Here is how it works in detail. The extension adds a single button to the Chrome address bar upon installation. A left-click on the button hides all open tabs and displays a single blank tab instead in the browser interface. A second left-click loads the websites again so that you can continue using them. The extension saves the open tabs to bookmarks. This means that you may lose whatever you have been working on before you have clicked on the button.

A green icon with the number of saved tabs attached to it is displayed when the panic button has been activated.

New users should take a look at the options of the extension by right-clicking on the icon and selecting options from the context menu.

Here it is possible to set a password to protect tabs from being restored. Anyone could theoretically click on the button to recover tabs otherwise.

You can furthermore change the default keyboard shortcut from F4 to another combination. Please note that you can only use the shortcut on http or https pages. It wont work on blank or internal pages.

Safe pages, that is pages that are displayed when the panic button is activated, can be configured in the options as well. You can select to display new tab, empty or custom pages. Custom pages are websites that you need to enter. These are then loaded whenever the panic button is activated in the browser.

The hide panic button option finally hides the button once it has been activated. This removes the indication from Chrome’s toolbar.

Chrome users can download the PanicButton extension from the Google Chrome Extension repository.

You could also disable and enable extensions to hide and show their buttons, but that is also not overly comfortable.

The Google Chrome Extensions Manager provides a solution for this problem. It basically adds two-click options to the browser to manage extensions, apps and themes comfortable.

A click on the extension’s button displays all installed extensions, applications and themes. Each entry is listed with its name, version and description plus buttons to open the homepage, uninstall or open the options page. The checkbox finally is used to quickly enable or disable the extension, theme or app in the browser. Links at the top lead to specific sections, for instance to display all disabled or outdated add-ons, or to display all extensions, apps and themes regardless of their status in one list.

The core feature that the Extensions Manager provides is the ability to quickly enable or disable extensions, applications or themes in the browser. It takes two clicks, one on the extension icon and the second in the checkbox to enable or disable select extensions.

That’s more comfortable than using Chrome’s built-in extension manager or the right-click context menu to do the same (at least for re-enabling them after disabling).

Themes can also be switched with two clicks once the Chrome Extensions Manager add-on has been installed.

The extension furthermore allows you to keep track of updates which are displayed in the recent tab, and of outdated extensions which are displayed in the outdated tab.

The options of Extensions Manager offer additional customizations. Here it is for instance possible to start the display in a specific view mode, change the types of entries that appear under recent, or disable notifications when extensions are enabled or disabled.

Especially users with lots of installed themes, extensions or apps in the Chrome browser can benefit from Extensions Manager as it makes it easier to deal with installed browser add-ons.

Chrome users can download the extension from the official Chrome Web Store.

The extension takes care not only of the network side of things but also of the browsing side. This means that you will get faster downloads plus a selection of productivity tweaks.

Downloads are accelerated thanks to several configuration tweaks that are applied automatically during installation.

The productivity and browsing enhancements require more explanation. On the productivity side, there are lots of smaller additions and tweaks that make life more comfortable. Most of the options are displayed under the General tab in the options.

Here is a list of features that can be enabled under General:

• Linkify text urls – This turns plain text urls into clickable links in the browser
• Add related articles to Wikipedia – Displays related articles on Wikipedia. I could not get this to work in Firefox.
• Enhance Awesomebar – No idea
• Show context menu additions – adds new options to the right-click context menu, for instance to download all images from a page.
• Enable Endless Page – Loads the next page and adds it at the end of the current one.
• Auto copy selected – Copies selected text automatically to the clipboard
• Paste on middle mouse click – Paste clipboard contents on middle mouse click
• Paste on right mouse click – Same as above, only on right-click.

The Search Results tab lists enhancement that can improve the way search results are displayed in the browser. This ranges from showing related search results, adding search refinements at the top to adding other search engine links in the results.

Qlauncher is an on-page search form that can be used to search popular search engines and other sites directly without leaving the current page. The search supports a variety of sites from Wikipedia and YouTube to Amazon, ReadWriteWeb and Lifehacker. Even the now defunct Download Squad is still in the add-ons listing. It is however possible to remove sites from the default listing and add new sites to the list. Just open the site that you want to add in the browser, press Ctrl-Space to open the Qlauncher interface and click the + icon next to the site to add it to the search.

The final option provided by FastestFox is a feature called Popup Bubble. The extension displays the popup whenever text is selected by the user. The popup may offer word definitions or display links to search for the term on Bing, Twitter, IMDB, YouTube and several other properties.

The Google Chrome pendant, FastestChrome is not offering all the options that the Firefox add-on offers. It supports the popup bubble, search results integration and a handful of the features of the add-ons General tab.

Firefox users can download and install FastestFox from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. Chrome users the Chrome extension from the Chrome web store.

Salimane Adjao Moustapha recently posted a photo of another place where Google (seemingly) has started to display ads: The Chrome browser. The screenshot shows a new tab page of the Chrome browser. The Apps section is open and at the top of it is an ad for Google’s own Chromebook. It states: Get a Chromebook for the holidays: the computer powered by Chrome.

The first part of the ad is underlined. It is not clear where it leads to as it is not revealed by Salimane, and I was not able to reproduce it.

The post on Google Plus sums up all the different opinions about the ad in Chrome. Some say it is Google’s right to display ads because the browser is free. Others that they should not do so without giving the user control over the ads. A third group is suggesting to switch to Firefox or Chromium. And a last group is angry but not angry enough to switch just yet. It would not make much sense either at the time considering that the majority may not have seen ads in Chrome yet.

I’d like to know your opinion about ads in web browsers. Do you think it is ok for Google to display ads in the browser, especially if it is for other company products? Or would you say that ads in a browser are a no-go, regardless of what they promote?

My personal opinion on the matter is that Chrome has turned adware if Google makes the decision to display these kind of ads to all Chrome users. It does not really matter if the ads promote Google products or third party products, it is still an ad.

Ultimate Football Results is an extension for the Google Chrome browser that brings football news to the web browser. The extension adds a single icon to the address bar of the browser upon installation. A click on that icon opens an overlay window with four information panels.

Each panel or frame can be configured individually to display the table, results or fixtures of a specific league or tournament. The extension supports all major and minor European leagues, from the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga to the Italian Series A, the Spanish Liga and the UEFA champions league and Europa League. It is all there.

Each frame can be configured individually to display table, results or fixtures for a specified league or tournament. Even better, a total of four tabs, each with four frames, can be configured in the options.

Football fans only interested in one league could for instance display all three in three different frames in the Home tab, add four European leagues under Europe, League One or Two in the Other tab and finally the FA cup, Champions League and European League under Knockout Cups.

First time users can configure the extension with a right-click on the icon and the selection of options. Here it is then possible to select a league or tournament and the type of news that should be displayed in the selected frame.

Some information that are presented in a frame can be clicked on. Game results for instance lead to game stats that list the goal scorers, bookings, match stats and links to text commentary of the game, the team list and the next result (that is the next game that has been played in that particular league or cup).

Ultimate Football Results is currently not including national teams, the World cup, Euro cup or any other cup that is played in the world with national teams. The extension lacks women football, non European leagues and lower divisions with the exception of League One and League Two. Adding those would certainly improve the extension further.

It sometimes takes a few seconds before the window is rendered and the results displayed. This can be a issue as there is no indication that news are loaded.

Google Chrome users can download and install Ultimate Football Results from the official Chrome Web Store.

Firefox users can try Footiefox which offers more leagues and countries, live notifications but less detailed information about each game.

The situation is different on public PCs, work PCs and other shared computer systems as it is usually a good idea to protect your privacy from the prying eyes of others. Sometimes it may even be essential to avoid the leaking of work secrets or other confidential data.

Chrome’s Incognito Mode works much like the other private browsing modes. Users can start it with the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-n or a click on the Wrench icon and the selection of New Incognito Window from the context menu.

Incognito Mode blocks the writing of permanent session data. This includes the browsing and search history, cookies or cached files. When users select to run the mode, a new window is launched. Incognito Mode is indicated by an icon in the upper left corner and information on new tab pages.

One of the issues with Chrome’s Incognito Mode is that it is not possible to configure default actions for domains. Whenever you want to launch a site in the private browsing mode, you need to perform the same steps. An automated solution would make the experience more comfortable and secure, as it would eliminate the possibility of forgetting to launch a site in the mode.

Ghost Incognito is a free extension for the Google Chrome web browser that maintains a list of domain names that should always be loaded in Chrome’s Incognito Mode.

The extension adds an icon to Chrome’s address bar. A click on the icon forces the browser to load the active domain in Incognito Mode whenever it is loaded. The current website will be loaded in Incognito Mode right away, and the same happens if the website is opened in future browsing sessions.

The list of domains can be cleared completely. Users who want to clear specific domains only first need to allow the extension to run in Incognito Windows. The extension icon then appears in those windows where it can be clicked to remove the domain from the listing.

There is no way of telling which domains have been forced to run in the private browsing mode.

Chrome users can download and install the Ghost Incognito extension from the official Chrome web store.

But Photo Finder could also aid users who are looking for specific photo types, for instance wide-angle or fisheye photos, or photos taken in a specific month or lightness.

Photo Finder processes Exif data that many digital cameras write automatically as meta data when photos are taken. The extension uses the vast archive of Google Images.

It adds an icon to Chrome’s address bar. A left-click on the icon displays a search form and menus to customize the photo search. It is not necessary to use the menus at all, which means that the extension can also be used as a quick way to search for photos on Google Images.

A digital camera manufacturer or model can be entered in the leftmost menu. You can for instance search for all photos taken with Canon cameras, or for photos that have been taken with Nikon’s D7000 digital camera. Once you start typing suggestions are made automatically by the extension.

The second and third menu are used to make changes to the camera’s zoom level and lightness. The fourth and final menu can be used to select a specific month for the photos. Want to find Statue of Liberty, Central Park or Golden Gate Bridge photos in Winter? Just select one of the Winter months and you are good to go.

The loading of the results page is not delayed by the selections. The selection may however have an impact on the quality of the results. Let me give you an example. If you select a camera that is not really that popular, you may up with unrelated or no photo results at all.

Photo Finder is nevertheless a handy extension for Chrome users. The extension can be downloaded and installed directly from the extension’s Chrome Web Store page.

Evernote Clearly is a new Chrome extension by the makers of Evernote. The extension basically reduces web pages to their textual contents. It is in this regard comparable to other tools, like Readable, TidyRead, Paragrasp or Readability that I have reviewed in the past.

Evernote Clearly adds an icon to Chrome’s address bar. Whenever you click on the icon the current web page is converted into a text only version that is very pleasing to the eye. The extension keeps the page title, text, images that belong to the article and links. It may add other elements at the end that do not necessarily belong to the article but are not distracting as they are displayed below the article.

Here is a screenshot of how the latest Ghacks article looks after it has been processed by Clearly.

The extension will also turn multi-paged articles into a single page. You can easily switch back to the original article at any time by clicking on the back icon in the small tool bar on the right. A click on a link leaves the Clearly interface as well and returns the target web page unaltered.

Clearly comes with three themes that can be activated with a click on the Aa button in the interface. The default theme displays black text on a gray page. The other two themes display black text on a white page or gray text on a black page.

It is furthermore possible to change the font size from medium to small or large.

The toolbar links to printing options to create a print out of the selected page.

Evernote users can link Clearly to their account which gives them the option to add clippings to Evernote. An option to create a custom theme is also available in the extension’s options. Here it is possible to change font types and colors as well as ling heights and widths. Experienced users can add custom CSS and make further modifications to the custom theme.

The extension works very well. I tried it on sites like Ghacks, Lifehacker, ZDnet or the Wall Street Journal. It did not work well on some sites though, including PC Magazine with its dreaded slideshows.

According to the introductory blog post over at the Evernote Blog, Evernote Clearly will available for other web browsers soon.

Google Chrome users can download Evernote Clearly from the official Chrome Web Store. (via)

White Noise can help improve concentration by covering up distracting noise. You basically play white noise in the background when you are working to get rid of distracting sounds in the surrounding.

Studies have shown that white noise can be effectively used to mask office noise.

The Google Chrome extension White Noise adds a white noise player to the web browser. The extension adds a single button to the Chrome browser interface. When you click on it you see the interface of the extension pop up.

Here you can turn on the white noise. When you do the sound starts playing immediately. White noise continues to play for as long as the browser window is open and the sound is not turned off again.

Some users may want to use the volume slider to change the level of volume. The default volume was for instance to loud for my liking, I had to turn it down to reach a level of comfort.

The automatically start when the computer turns on option is a bit misleading. This basically turns on white noise whenever you start the Chrome browser. The setting has probably been designed for Chromebooks where the web app could indeed be turned on when the computer starts.

Google Chrome users can install White Noise from the Chrome Web Store.

How do you cope with distracting noise when working on a computer?

The ScriptNo extension adds an icon to the Chrome address bar. The icon acts as a notifier that informs the user about the number of scripts that have been blocked on the current page. The icon color indicates blocked scripts (red), temporarily allowed scripts (blue), whitelisted parent pages but blocked scripts (white) or if the extension is disabled on that particular page (grey).

A left-click on the icon displays all blocked resources, the domain name and links to options and a quick start guide.

All script elements are blocked by default. Users now have options to change the preferred action for a particular script or domain.

• Allow: Whitelists the specific domain which does not necessarily have to be the root domain. E.g. whitelist www.ghacks.net but not de.ghacks.net.
• Trust: Whitelist the entire domain and all of its subdomains
• Distrust: Adds the current domain to the blacklist.
• Temp: Depending on the default mode the domain will either be allowed for the current session (if default mode is set to block) or allowed (if default mode is set to allow).

When you change a script’s state, e.g. from blocked to allow, the page will be reloaded to take that into account. If you click on the icon again you will then see that the script is listed under Allowed Resources and no longer under blocked resources. A clear button is added to those scripts to undo the preference change.

The options of the ScriptNo extension offer customizations. Here you can set the default mode of operation (block or allow) and allow or block specific HTML elements. The latter could be interesting for users who always want to see noscript contents on the page or audio and video contents. There is even an option to block images from being loaded automatically.

The options list four additional settings to configure the extension. Privacy Settings allow the user to configure the following features:

• Block Unwanted Content: (Default: enabled; remove unwanted content from known ad / malware domains; domains gathered from MVPS HOSTS, hpHOSTS (ad / tracking servers), Peter Lowe’s HOSTS Project, MalwareDomainList.com, and DNS-BH – Malware Domain Blocklist)
• Unwanted Content Mode: (Default: Relaxed; Relaxed = whitelisted domains will not be blocked; Strict = domains in the unwanted domain list will be blocked even if whitelisted)
• Antisocial Mode: (Default: disabled; always remove social widgets/buttons, even if whitelisted)
• Remove Webbugs: (Default: enabled; remove “invisible” third-party elements)
• Block Click-Through Referrer: (Default: enabled; blocks referrer information when clicking on external links)

Behavior Settings include the following options:

• Page Link Opening Behaviour: (Default: -Unchanged-; modifies how all links are opened)
• Respect Same-Domain: (Default: disabled; preserve same-domain elements)
• Auto-Refresh Page: (Default: enabled; auto-refresh page after list change)
• Show Rating Button: (Default: enabled; if ticked, adds rating button under domains in tab popup)
• Classic Options Mode: (Default: disabled; if ticked, closes tab options everytime an option is clicked)
• Sort by Domain: (Default: enabled; sorts URL lists by domains)

The remaining settings include a whitelist and blacklist where all previously added domains are listed (with options to remove), and import and export settings.

New users should take a look at the quick start guide. The guide needs a bit of revamping considering that it uses terms that are no longer found in the extension. But that’s not a big issue.

The extension is hosted both on the Chrome Web Store and on Google Code where the source code can be downloaded and analyzed. Google Chrome users who want NoScript like protection for their web browser should definitely take a look at ScriptNo, it is awesome.

There is a way currently to do that on the stable channel. Users on the Dev channel, which is Chrome 17 right now, cannot use that method anymore which indicates that it is only a temporary solution for the time being.

What you need to do is to add the startup parameter --new-tab-page to the web browser start. Close all instances of the Chrome browser on your system. Windows users can right-click the Chrome executable and select Properties from the context menu. The Chrome executable is located in the user directory. Windows 7 users find it under C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\

The Google Chrome Properties menu pops up once you have selected properties from the context menu. Append --new-tab-page at the end of the Target path (leaving a blank inbetween) and save the changes with a click on OK.

When you start Chrome again you should be able to work with the old new tab page again.

But what if the flag is no longer working? Your only option then is to install a third party extension to change the new tab page of the browser. You could install extensions like Define your own new tab to create your own tab page, New Tab Redirect to select a specific web address that is loaded when the new tab button is activated, Empty New Tab page for a blank page or Awesome New tab Page for a customizable tab page.

What’s your take on the new tab page in Chrome?

You only get to see video ratings when you click on the video to open the play video screen on YouTube where you can watch the video.

That’s a usability issue, considering that many users would use the ratings of a video to determine whether they want to watch it or not. While it certainly should not be the only thing you are looking at, it can move your decision into a certain direction. Would you rather watch a video with 1000 positive and no negative ratings or one with no positive and 1000 negative ratings about a topic of interest?

YouTube Ratings Preview is a free extension for the Google Chrome web browser that adds video ratings to all YouTube pages. It does so elegantly and without changing the look and feel of the YouTube website.

Once installed you will notice a new tiny bar below each video on the video hosting site that displays the number of positive votes in green and the number of negative votes in red.

You can furthermore hover over the bar to see the positive vote count as a percentage value and the number of total ratings a video has received on the site.

Google Chrome users can download and install YouTube Ratings Preview from the Chrome Web Store.

Firefox users; Do you know of a comparable add-on for the web browser? Let me know in the comments.

The Google Chrome web browser, and Chromium as well, use prerendering in a limited way. It may be used when you enter a phrase into the Chrome address bar. But which page or pages do get prerendered when this is happening?

That’s easy to find out (thanks to François Beaufort who posted a short demonstration video on YouTube). All you need to do is to open the Google Chrome or Chromium Task Manager to see which pages get prerendered by the web browser.

You can open the Chrome Task Manager with a click on the Wrench icon, the selection of Tools and Task Manager. You can alternatively use the keyboard shortcut Shift-Esc to bring up the Task Manager directly.

Look for Prerender: entries in the Task Manager. The indicator is followed either by the site url that got prerendered or the page title. It may still take time to identify the prerendered link on the page as Google is not displaying the information in the web browser.

Prerendering in the web browser is automatically enabled. Users who do not want to use the feature can disable it the following way. Enter chrome://flags in the address bar and locate the “Prerender from omnibox” option.

Enables prerendering of suggestions from the Omnibox and predicts appropriate network actions (prerendering, Instant, DNS preconnect) by calculating a confidence value for each Omnibox result.

Switch to disabled in the pulldown menu to turn the feature off.

Google Chrome users can open pdf documents directly in the browser. While the viewer is not comparable in functionality to desktop pdf readers, it is certainly enough to read a document online.

And native support for Adobe’s Flash technology ensures that Chrome users are automatically updated to the newest version whenever it is released, which improves overall security significantly.

Some Chrome users on the other hand may not want to use the native plugins of the Chrome browser. This can be the case if they have noticed that the Flash plugin is acting up or if they have installed a feature rich pdf reader on their system that they prefer to use.

Chrome, even with another Flash or PDF reader plugin installed, continues to use its native plugins for Flash and PDF contents (see Why are Two Flash Player Plugins Running In Google Chrome? for instance for an explanation).

Users of the Chrome web browser need to disable the native plugins before they can use third party plugins or software instead. This is done by entering chrome://plugins/ in the Chrome address bar and hitting enter.

The page that opens displays a list of all plug-ins currently installed in the Chrome browser. Relevant for this guide are the Flash and Chrome PDF Viewer plugins. A click on Disable below the Chrome PDF Viewer disables those capabilities in the browser.

In regard to Flash, it is a bit more complicated. It is necessary to click on Details first to display all installed Flash plugins in Chrome. Locate the Flash plugin that has its location in the Chrome application folder and click the disable link to disable it. Make sure another Flash plugin is still active if you want to use the technology on the Internet.

That’s how you disable both the native Flash plugin and the native pdf viewer in Google Chrome.

Are you using Google Chrome’s native plugins? Or did you notice issues using those plugins?