Currently the Mac Beta of Google Chrome doesn’t run extensions. It is promised very soon from Google, this week maybe. However the Open-Source project “Chromium” has a current build that does accept all the extensions from the Google extension gallery among a few other features still not in the Beta release. Here is how to do it:
Grab the latest Chromium for MAC ZIP file (as of right now) and unzip it. Then drag to your applications. It will be called Chromium, not Google Chrome. It will even have a different set of bookmarks, history, settings, etc.
Then once running, you can go to the extensions gallery and select and install them. My favorites so far are…
XMarks – Allows me to sync my bookmarks with my other computers, including Safari, Firefox and Chrome on Windows. This replaced the FoxMarks program in the early FF days and became a real lifesaver when Google quit supporting the Google Bookmarks sync extension for FireFox. Of course Google Chrome will now support syncing to Google bookmarks, but most Firefox users have moved to using XMarks and so this extension will allow them to stay there. If you are going to live in Chromium all the time, then Google Bookmarks will be fine.
Email This Page – Add a missing feature to the browser to Send/EMail the link of a web page to someone. Once installed, use the options to select GMail or leave alone to default to your system email program. I could not undetstand why Google Chrome never had this simple feature as part of the standard feature set. Now anyone with a little creativity can build a Link Emailer extension. This one is simple and works.
Evernote Clipper – Allows me to continue to clip stuff from websites into my Evernote notebooks. Evernote is the very best in online / offline note storage. Your clips are saved BOTH on the Evernote servers and your local system using a local client version of the software. This extension works with the online website to post up a note from any web page you are looking at. It uploads without spawning the local software.
AutoZoom – This extension is even better than the Chrome/FireFox zoom feature. Not only does to cause Chromium to remember the zoom setting for every page you visit (which Chrome won’t do), it allows you to set a default zoom size for all new pages you visit. This is my favorite extension so far, as I have a large screen and always had to manually zoom each new site I visited to be more readable. Now Chromium saves the day and my eyes!
AdThwart - The popular ad blocking extension of Firefox is AdBlock Plus. This extension while not the same is close enough. It uses the same subscription database as AdBlock. I still see some ads come through (as I did with AdBlock) and I see partial ad displays showing up and then they get removed by the extension. So I’m not sure if it really stops the downloading of the ads, but I haven’t really tested this thoroughly. I’m sure it will get better with time. Update: The AdBLock developers are posting their extension as they develop it also. So you might try that one too as they bring it up to speed. Another beautiful thing about Chrome/Chromium is the easy way to turn on/off extensions without restarting the browser!
The extension gallery is very new, only days old. I’m looking for more good extensions, but it is hard to find them as it seems that since the extension developing process is so easy, that the stupidest things are showing up, not really extensions, but bookmarks/webpages made into extensions. Not very useful. I’m thinking the Extension Gallery will start looking more like the iPhone App Store than Firefox Add-Ons.
OK, I don’t get it. How do you carry on a discussion on Twitter?
With more and more applications running in the browser, like Google Apps, the browser becomes the center of activity. If your little $300 netbook runs a browser real well, you can handle most of your daily duties with it.
