Chrome begins to grow up
Written by Writer on Friday, October 3rd, 2008
SLOAN Ranger
Chrome begins to grow up
Ways to make it a little more pleasant to use - and more useful
After thrashing the largely featureless Chrome last week for failure to provide much in the way of helpers and no add-ons at all, I have continued to run the new Google browser in addition to my regulars. It remains Number 4, meaning it just isn’t in the running for my list of preferred Internet browsers.
Google at least is serious about Chrome problems. Six days after releasing the program for download, it started distributing an upgrade with security fixes (although it refused to say what they were, a troubling stance) and bug fixes for its JavaScript engine.
But I have discovered some ways to make it a little more pleasant to use, and thus a tad more useful.
For example.
I just won’t use a browser without an ad-blocker. Chrome has a pop-up stopper which seems to work pretty well, but for speed and ease I want to see web pages without adverts.
You can easily put Chrome in a black (as illustrated) skin, or switch to a more correct green at the click of a button of the Theme Switcher. Removing adverts is also easy, as the new Google browser begins to grow into a useable program.
I’m not alone. By far the most popular add-on for Firefox is AdBlock Plus. A big selling point of Maxthon and other improved Internet Explorer clones is their built-in advert suppression.
Even the Microsoft Explorer Ver 8 has a privacy setting that blocks both adverts and third-party cookies. This is far from the only thing I need to put Chrome in my Top Three. But it is a mandatory thing.
And while Chrome isn’t an open-source application, it still has captured the interest of hackers, crackers and geeks in huge numbers. It does have new ideas and it does have attractive features which are new to browsing. It needs a lot of fixing-up (these people agree) but there’s a core of a heck of a good browser in there.
Ad-blocking can be done. It can be done in about a minute or so, in fact. You need a third-party program and you need to do a bit of tweaking, but Chrome can quickly start blocking adverts with the best of them. Here’s how.
First go to this web site, download the latest version for Windows, and install it: (http://www.privoxy.org)
Privoxy is a little-known (until now, eh?) open-source program for the paranoid (until now) that works in the background to blacklist and whitelist websites, block cookies, manage content and the like. It also blocks adverts, which is really all we want, for now.
Now start your Chrome. Click on the Customise icon, that little wrench in the top-right corner. Click Options, then Under the Hood, then the Change proxy settings button. Your Windows Internet Properties windows will pop up in the correct (Connections) tab. Click LAN Settings. Go down to Proxy server and tick the “Use a proxy server” box.
Enter this address: “127.0.0.1″ without the quotes. Enter the Port number 8118. If possible, tick the box that says “Bypass proxy server for local addresses.”
Robert is now your uncle. Close and restart Chrome. Surf to your favourite site which used to be strewn with adverts and delight in the difference. Geeks may want to play with Privoxy, which should be in your list of Programs under the start menu. You can turn it on or off if you right-click the icon in the system area down by the clock.
You may hate Privoxy (which also will control all your browsers of course) and that’s fine. Just reverse all of the above and remove it. The point is that people are working to make Chrome better.
A polite Post Database reader… there I go repeating myself again. A reader asked me if Google Chrome is portable, and work from a thumb drive he can carry around. Firefox not only does this, it also will do it with its silent, secret version Tor, the anti-censorship version.
The answer is that original Chrome is not portable. But a German geek and blogger known as Caschy actually made a portable version and has provided it in English and German versions.
The carry-around Google Chrome is available at (tinyurl.com/58s8fu)
You will have to un-Zip the download to your thumb drive, and then run the key file ChromeLoader.exe
Again, this particular version may turn out not to be your cuppa. The point is that Chrome has caught on, and between Google and its fans, it seems likely that solutions to real and perceived Chrome problems will keep coming, as they have with IE and with Firefox.
And speaking of really, super-important problems, that one-look Chrome has to go. What use could a web browser possibly be if you couldn’t skin it, and make your version look different from your friends’ and co-workers’ browsers?
Chromespot has you covered, with an Automatic Theme Switcher yet.
Okay, it’s not that magic, so far, but it does give you three skins right away and access to others.
Work fast, and you can be the first girl in your section where people will stop in their tracks, look over your shoulder and ask, “What browser is that? Chrome? Wow, how did you do that?” If the right person asks, tell him you’ll explain at the disco tonight, wink-wink.
Go to this link and download the 785KB Theme Switcher from the information page at (tinyurl.com/6lf3mr) or download it directly here (tinyurl.com/5w2r4r)
Unzip this file in the folder of your choice - Program Files, Utils, whatever. Go to that folder and start the program Google Theme Switcher.exe. You can quickly make Chrome green, black or the default blue. If you don’t like any of these, start up Google.com (of course) and search for “chrome themes”.
One page I found has some skins and also has clear instructions on how to manually change the look of Chrome. You have to copy skins manually into Chrome’s Themes sub-folder according to the folks at (tinyurl.com/6ejt3n)
Chrome has the makings of a real browser. Some generous people are going to try to help it make the grade.
Email: wandasloan@gmail.com
