It’s no secret that Google’s Chrome web browser is gaining users and winning over hearts every day. Having a meagre user base back when it launched, it’s now getting closer than ever to displacing Firefox as the go-to browser for non-IE conformists. Google put in a lot of thought while developing Chrome. At release, Google said that it had re-thought the way the Web works. The technologies used in Chrome were proof of that line of thought. After two years in the wild, that thought process doesn’t seem to have changed at Google. If you use Google Chrome Canary build, you can find out exactly what’s up Google’s mind and what’s the latest innovation they are thinking about.
So here are several reasons why Google Chrome Canary should really be the browser to use.
Within Google Chrome Canary, head over to about:flags to enable the features discuss below. After enabling each flag, you’ll need to restart the browser for the changes to take effect.
Disclaimer: Google Chrome Canary is the most cutting edge build of the Google Chrome browser. However, since it contains many experimental features, it may or may not be stable on your system. For example, I was unable to use the Side Tabs flag on my system. Nevertheless, we have reports of the same working perfectly from a large number of Internet users. Use Google Chrome Canary at your discretion.
Minimal UI
Upon launch, Google really capitalized on Chrome’s minimalist UI. With the Canary addition of Chrome, they’ve taken that one step further and now provide you with almost your entire screen to work with. What I mean is that you can now get rid of the entire URL bar while browsing the internet. It will only show up when you open a new tab. To enter a new URL, hit Ctrl+L, or click on the tab name. Once this flag is enabled, right-click on any open tab and click on “Hide The Toolbar” to see the magic.
Flag to Enable: Compact Navigation
Widescreen UI
What’s better than having a lot of space to browse? It’s the ability to better organize a large number of tabs. While I personally don’t use this much, I feel this will be amazingly beneficial to anyone who uses a netbook. By enabling this flag, you get all your tabs listed vertically to the side of your screen. We could not successfully get this to run on our test system. Hit up this link to see how it works.
Flag To Enable: Side Tabs
Use Plug-ins On Demand
Another favorite of mine, this one has been a lifesaver many-a-time. The Click To Play flag disables all plugins on a page. This has a number of benefits. Firstly, you can block all outdated or buggy plugins. Secondly, on a slow connection, you can make a page load faster by making sure none of the plugins load up. Once enabled, you will be presented with a gray place-holder with a play button for every plugin on a page. You can click on this button to run the plugin if you so desire.
Flag To Enable: Click To Play
A New New Tab Page
The existing new tab page for Chrome is frankly, kind of boring. Enabling the new tab page flag transforms it into something more usable. The tab page is now divided into pages (something like an Android homescreen), and you can now click a link at the bottom to switch between recent websites and installed apps. Clean, isn’t it?
Flag To Enable: Experimental new tab page
Tab Groups
Tab grouping is not restricted to Firefox alone. Google has its own grouping experiment up its sleeve. By enabling this flag, you can add a couple of options to the tab context menu (the menu that shows when you right click a tab). This options include Select Tab By Domain (which selects all tabs from the same domain), and Select Tab By Opener. I admit that I’m slightly perplexed with what the second option does. Any ideas, anyone?
Flag To Enable: Add grouping to tab context menu
With Google and Chrome, I’ve come to expect the best of innovations to make for a better user experience. Over the years, Google has proven time and time again that they are a force to reckon with in the innovation and engineering space. Let us know about your favorite Google innovations in the comments.
Alex Shen
June 24, 2011
Hi Abhigyan, great article!
I was wondering whether some of these are Windows exclusive, or at least are at the moment, as I only found the 3rd and 4th of these flags in about:flags?
Thanks,
Alex
Abhigyan Banerjee
June 24, 2011
Hey Alex,
Thanks for the feedback. We always appreciate the appreciation! You are right. Some of these flags will be available on Windows only. There are different builds of Chrome for different operating systems and not all of them are coming up at the same breakneck speed as the Windows version.
Hope that settles your query.
Alex Shen
June 24, 2011
Okay, thanks for confirming that!
Again a great article, more please!
HunterParty
June 29, 2011
But still my love for Opera is as deeper as ocean. but still URL hiding feature is excellent
Bob
July 23, 2011
What I can’t get is why the HELL I can’t have my bookmarks come in to everywhere I use Chrome!
Is it a syncing thing? Help!
Abhigyan Banerjee
July 27, 2011
You can. As long as you have set up syncing on all the systems where you use Chrome, it should work. Go to the Wrench Menu > Options > Personal Stuff > Set Up Sync
Swamykant
July 23, 2011
Cool article. I will try this soon.
ScottK
July 23, 2011
I haven’t tried it yet (I’m reading on my droid), but my guess on the “select by opener” option would be that it groups tabs which were “spawned” from the same parent tab. For example, I get a daily digest type email that includes links to a bunch of different development articles on various sites. Often I’ll go through the email, open each link that looks interesting, then sift through them throughout the day as I have idle time. Since these were all loaded from the same parent tab – my email page – being able to group them together would be kind of awesome.
ScottK
July 24, 2011
I was more or less right – it “selects” all of the tabs opened by the same parent, plus the parent. But having done that, I’m not sure what use it is. I expected it to “group” them somehow, something like how windows can group multiple instances of the same app in the toolbar. The only real use I can see is you can drag them out of the current window and into a new window. Though once you’ve done that, it appears to lose the “opener” connection.
Of all these, the only one that’s really appealing is the new “new tab” page – but that’s mostly eye candy, and not a huge leap from what it used to show, with the screenshot of your most visited sites. Also has two mysterious panels – Foo and Bar.
The side tabs has promise, but is kind of ugly, and it opens new tabs in (IMO) the wrong order – new tabs are added at the top. Then when you switch back to top tabs, they’re reversed from the order they would be if you had opened them on the top. I didn’t try the “click to play”, and don’t appear to have the “compact navigation” one.
Abhigyan Banerjee
July 27, 2011
Compact Navigation is definitely still there. Are you sure you are using the Canary channel and not the Beta channel? They are two different builds.
Jan
July 25, 2011
But does it *finally* have Print Preview??? No mention of it here…
Abhigyan Banerjee
July 27, 2011
I believe Print Preview has even been pushed to the stable builds of Chrome. Have you tried hitting Ctrl+P? If that doesn’t give you Print Preview, maybe you aren’t on the latest version of Chrome. When was the last time you allowed it to auto-update. Go to Wrench Menu > About Google Chrome to check for updates.
OttifantSir
July 29, 2011
Tab grouping has never been Firefox-only. I like Chrome, I like Firefox, but I’m so bloody tired of hearing Firefox or Chrome getting the credit for being the only one who does a feature when Opera does them too. I know it’s a more marginal browser than Chrome or Firefox, but when you write a tech-article about features in browsers, PLEASE don’t spread lies like a feature being XXXX-browser only, when other browsers have the feature too.
The Wide Screen UI is also available in Opera, and since it hasn’t updated for a few weeks now, and it’s a stable release, it’s safe to say that Chrome wasn’t first with this feature.
New Tab page has long ago been very much better than Chrome’s recent addition of features in the “bleeding edge” release.
I know I don’t use anywhere near half of the features in Opera, but most of the articles on new features in Chrome or Firefox are features already available in Opera, and sometimes they’re features that have been built-in for several years.
In Firefox you need an extension to use the browser for web-development, but that feature is built-in to Opera.
Print preview has been in Opera since I started using it, somewhere around version 3.
PLEASE! check out Opera before declaring Chrome the most innovative browser in the world, and before claiming that either Firefox or Chrome is the first with a feature, because I have often found that Opera was first with it.
Really, the only downsides to Opera, in my opinion, is that its source code isn’t open, and that it gets far too little attention and usage.
Hector
January 24, 2012
One reason not to try this on a Mac? You cannot get rid of it. Seems once you go Canary, you are stuck with it, even if you completely delete it, it will update itself to Canary from the stable build without your permission.
This is unacceptable behavior from an app. Unacceptable!
manjit5190
March 17, 2012
Canary cannot be your default browser.. It’s a secondary installation…..
JacksonChung
March 17, 2012
@manjit5190 Of course, what we meant was to use it as your everyday browser
manjit5190
March 18, 2012
yes, I wanted it to be the default browser… I loved the ui- minimalist… well it’s very good…@JacksonChung @manjit5190
