Six essential extensions for Google Chrome

Firefox used to be our web browser of choice for netbook use — it’s a better performer than Internet Explorer, is more secure, and can be tweaked to high heaven with a bevy of third-party extensions.

In fact extensions were the reason Firefox is so well-suited for netbook use, which is why we wrote a guide a while back that recommended several to make the web browser really sing on a small-screen netbook.

Firefox isn’t ageing well, though. It’s still an excellent browser, but a faster, fitter upstart has now pushed it aside on all of our portables — Google Chrome.

Chrome’s speedier page rendering and tighter memory footprint make it a perfect match for netbooks, but as with Firefox, it benefits from a few alterations before it really shines. So, if you haven’t given Chrome a try yet, go get it and then grab our list of recommended extensions — all available from https://chrome.google.com/extensions.

FlashBlock & AdBlock

Two extensions that perform a similar purpose — preventing unwanted content from appearing in web pages.

FlashBlock is really essential for use with mobile broadband connections, since it puts a stop to potentially lengthy downloads on Flash-heavy pages when bandwidth is in short supply. It also means that you’re not distracted by unwanted and extraneous page elements — including pop-up ads — when you’re browsing.

Instead, you just see a grey box that you can click if you want to see the Flash content, plus sites that you don’t want to block (YouTube, for example) can be added to a whitelist with a single click.

AdBlock for Chrome isn’t as well developed for Chrome as it is for Firefox and it seems to allow ads to download and appear before blocking them, rather than blocking the source domain from the get-go. Custom ad blocking is also rather fiddly with the current version and all too easily botched, but this is still the best option for keep ads at bay when browsing.

FreshStart

Google Chrome will restore your browsing session when you restart the application (you’ll need to enable it via Options > Basics), but what if you could save several different browsing sessions and even sync them between your desktop PC and netbook?

That’s just what FreshStart offers and, once installed, a new button on the toolbar provides instant access to your saved sessions, both by group and tab-by-tab. The extension allows adds crash recovery (not that Chrome is prone to crashing) and is perfect for saving different sets of tabs for one-click to your favourite sites — you might have a ‘morning coffee’ session saved, for example.

Better still, FreshStart also syncs with Xmarks (see below), so you can access saved sessions on different computers.

Xmarks Bookmarks Sync

Chrome offers built-in bookmark syncing via your Google Account, but we found it tended to mess with the ordering of bookmarks saved in folders — and it doesn’t work with all other web browsers, of course. Xmarks, on the other hand, leaves everything as is and since it’s also available for Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, it means you can maintain a single set of bookmarks for all of your computers.

Unlike Mozilla Weave for Firefox, Xmarks won’t sync saved passwords and it has been known to duplicate bookmarks with cross-browser syncing. Since your bookmarks are backed up on the Xmarks server though, it’s simple to restore an older set if something does go wrong.

VerticalTabs

Chrome’s non-standard interface maximises the viewable area for web pages by putting tabs where the application title bar should be, but the trade-off is that a web page title is only visible on its tab. Open more than a few web pages at once on a 1024 x 600 netbook screen and the tabs soon shrink to a width where the page title is no longer visible — which is where VerticalTabs comes in.

VerticalTabs doesn’t replace the Chrome tab bar, but it does add a button to the toolbar that, when clicked, displays a list of all open tabs for that window, complete with their full names. Just click one to open it or use the keyboard shortcuts to select one.

Folders4Gmail

The Folders4Gmail Greasemonkey script for Firefox is one of our all-time favourite tweaks, since it allows nested labels in the Gmail web interface for easier email management. Chrome can use Greasemonkey scripts directly, but Folders4Gmail doesn’t work properly this way, so it’s just as well that someone has turned it into a fully functioning extension that restores the same set of features.

So, those are our six favourite extensions for tweaking Google Chrome on a netbook, but we’re sure we’ve missed a few. Let us know in the comments if there’s an extension you think we’ve missed, or does a better job than our suggestions.