When Google launched its Chrome browser the first thing that hit you was its speed. It was fast. damned fast, The interface was lean, almost Zen Minimalist which is my style – just look at this blog! But there was something missing – functionality, or rather than added functionality that Firefox provided through its comprehensive collection of extensions. All that has changed with the introduction of extensions into Chrome.
If you have the standard “production line” version of Chrome extensions cann0t be installed, you have to download the beta version which is available from this linked page.
The first extension to be loaded was Xmarks – which used to be Foxmarks – one of the best bookmark synchronisation services around. Through Xmarks you can sync all your bookmarks on multiple computers which, if you have as many bookmarks as me, is a huge time saving.
Next on was Evernote link which means that whatever page I am on I can highlight selected text or the whole page, click on the elephant and its just gets saved for future reference. Evernote remains my favourite web clipping service despite some strong alternatives which I have covered in this review and this follow up post.
For some weird reason Google has not yet produced a toolbar for Chrome but I have got around this by installing extensions for Google Calendar, links to my Zoho account and also Remember The Milk (remind me to write a post about RTM, I’m wanting to like it but …) and Google Reader notifier.
Chrome with extensions isn’t perfect – but then neither is Firefox – but it has made tremendous progress in recent months and a check of access logs to this blog alone shows a regular rise in people who are using it. I wish that Google would get the lack of toolbar sorted but at the moment it’s a minor point.
What will be interesting to watch is the relationship between Mozilla and Google. The traditional pairing against Microsoft must be under strain and now that there is a new netbook OS on the horizon – Jolicloud – things are getting very interesting.
Certainly when I get around to investing in a netbook in the new year I shall be installing Chrome rather than Firefox.
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