Tag Archives: chrome

Downloading the CRX of a Chrome extension

There was this certain extension whose popup was too high for my screen. To fix the issue I needed to download the CRX file of the extension. But with the new Chrome Web Store layout there isn’t a way to do that as you did earlier.

But then Pahan came up with a solution. The trick was to make use of the Chrome’s Developer tools pane. Here’s how:

  1. Navigate to the extension’s page in the Web Store.
  2. Open Developer Tools (wrench icon -> Tools -> Developer Tools)
  3. Click on its Network tab.
  4. Now click on the ‘Add to Chrome’ button in the extension’s page. (If you’ve already installed it you have to uninstall and try again)
  5. The Dev Tools pane will show several files. Find the one with a .crx extension among them.
  6. Right click on it and choose Copy Location.
  7. Now go to Firefox (or any other browser) and open the link. You’ll be prompted to save the file.
Know an easier method? Let me know in the comments.

What are the technologies behind this site?

Builtwith extensionWhen you come across a nicely built website, don’t you always wonder what technologies the site is built with. Perhaps a sneak peek at the page source can give you some idea.

But there’s an easier method. There’s this nifty little Chrome extension called BuiltWith (available for Firefox as well). When you’re in a webpage simply click the BuiltWith icon and it pops up with the list of technologies the page is built with and a small description of each of them. The image shows a part of the list twitter.com is built with. Yes, it works on https sites as well.

This may not be much of a thing for some people, but if you’re a noob about these things like me you’ll be able to learn a lot of web-tech stuff with this.

Chrome extensions you MUST have

I’m angry today. Very. And I will be writing about must-have Chrome extensions. Keyword: must-have. If you think they aren’t must-have, fucking leave already! Sorry, I won’t use swear words again.

1. AdBlock
It’s the first must-have. Why not? How the hell is one supposed to browse the web with all the colorful ads? You have to concentrate on the content, not the ads.

2. Evernote Clipper
When you find something interesting in a web page what do you do? Clip it to Evernote of course. You don’t use Evernote? Go fuck yourself. Sorry.

3. LastPass
What can you do without lastpass? Type in the usernames and passwords everytime manually? You browser saves them? That’s only temporary. You HAVE to use lastpass.

4. Mail Checker Plus for Gmail
How else would you get a notification when a mail comes? You don’t use Gmail? Dumb idiot!

5. RSS Subscription Extension
Without this how would you subscribe to blogs? How would you find the RSS links of a web site? This is an official Google extension, so you better install it now. Now.

6. Singreesi
It was developed by me. So all of you MUST install it. No excuses, please.

7. Wikipedia Companion
Everytime you want to check up a word, a name, or something what do you do? Open a wikipedia tab and do search. Stupid numbskull. Go install the Wikipedia Companion. It’s the super easy way to browse wikipedia.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’m going to kill someone and get rid of this anger. Kthxbai.

Streamie – Not just another twitter client

StreamieWe’ve seen hundreds of twitter clients come and go. Only the fittest survive in this frenzy. And Streamie is going to be one of them.

Streamie is a browser-based twitter client, so it’s cross-platform from the outset. It’s timeline is real time, as in Tweetdeck. But these are not what make it stand among the rest.

Streamie strives to remove the unwanted bloat from the timeline. As seen in the screenshot below, only the the text of the tweet and user’s dp are displayed. Furthermore, it filters out long conversations (longer than 3). These filtered out tweets are shown as slim lines without text in the screenshot. If you want to see the hidden conversations, just click on those lines and they will appear. The result is a minimal timeline with less distractions and bloat.

Streamie twitter client

Streamie is still in its beta, so expect some minor glitches and sluggishness. There’s still no support for twitter lists, etc. However, the app is still good for a beta. Hope the developers will continue improving the web app and if properly developed Streamie has the potential to become one of the best web-based twitter clients out there.

Streamie in Chrome Web Store

Chrome extensions I can't live without

Just thought of sharing the Google Chrome extensions I use daily. In fact I’ve tested a lot of Chrome extensions and these are the few that have remained without being uninstalled.

  1. Google Mail Checker Plus
  2. Readability Redux – Extension for the popular Readability bookmarklet
  3. Instachrome – Plugin for Instapaper
  4. Tweet Button
  5. goo.gl URL shortener
  6. FeedSquares – Google Reader extension
  7. Session Buddy – Remembers the currently opened tabs

Quick view PDFs in your browser

There’s news that Chrome is going to get its own PDF viewer. Yes, opening PDFs in Chrome has always been a real pain in the ass. But there’s always been better alternatives to opening the PDFs in your browser.

In the google search page, simply click on the Quick View button and the PDFs are rendered in an HTML-like format. This won’t load the actual PDFs, but for most of our day-to-day needs and previewing the PDFs, Quick View serves just fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

ezLinkPreview makes browsing in Google Chrome damn easy

This wonderful Chrome extension has made my life quite easy, especially because I browse a lot of news sites. Hover on a link while pressing Alt and the link’s target page opens up in a popup. No more messing with the tabs. The popups are easily expandable and movable.

This comes especially handy when you’re in  a news site and have to open new tabs for each news item you want to read.

Download link

Here’s a screenshot to give you an idea:

Chrome is odd in Ubuntu

Starting from Lucid Lynx, the control buttons are placed at the left side of the title bar in Ubuntu. This is quite cool. Once you get used to it, it seems more intuitive than having them on the right side.

But unfortunately one single app still has its buttons in right side, and that’s Google Chrome. Wish they’d let the users choose where to place the buttons.