The browser wars are heating up again. Microsoft's touting the improved performance and security of Internet Explorer 8, dozens of new Firefox extensions are released every day, and, according to Apple, Safari 4 will be even faster than its speedy predecessor. Meanwhile, Opera just keeps chugging along at version 9.64, with version 10 beta 3 now available.
Just a few weeks ago, Google announced its plans to create an operating system based on Chrome. Considering that the browser itself is barely a year old, such plans may be premature. Then again, maybe not. But for right now, I'll keep looking for ways to make the Chrome browser more useful.
Last June, I described ways to change Chrome's default settings. Here's a look at ways to revamp the browser's interface and access some of its useful hidden features.
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On Wednesday Google released two small but important updates to the mobile version of Gmail. New to the service are keyboard shortcuts and address auto-completion; two time-saving features that desktop Gmail users have been enjoying for years.
The keyboard shortcuts (obviously) do not work on the iPhone. For now, Google is limiting them to Android phones with a physical keyboard. These are exactly the same as on the desktop version, so you don't need to re-learn anything.
(Credit:
CNET)
The auto-completion, on the other hand, is available to everyone and is quite a time saver. It begins pulling up names from your contacts as soon as you type just one letter.
Auto-completion only works in the "to" field when typing a new e-mail though, and does not work on Gmail's search like you're able to do on the desktop variant by using the Gmail labs add-on. Hopefully that feature will trickle down to this mobile version, since it's immensely helpful when trying to add search operators, or sort out messages from specific contacts.
One thing to note is that these new features are only available in the English version of Gmail mobile. Google has not said if, or when, they will make their way to other localizations of the service.
If you're a keyboard shortcut junkie in Google Reader, Gmail and Google Docs you might have noticed Google.com, the mother of all Google services, is a bit lacking in the keyboard shortcuts department. There is currently an official Google-sanctioned experimental keyboard shortcuts program you can opt into, although there's the slight chance that the company may one day kill it off. That and it won't remember to give you the shortcut keys the next time you search if you're not signed in to your Google account.
If both of these things are holding you back from keyboard shortcut dominance, worth downloading is Janakan Arulkumarasan's Google Keyboard Shortcuts extension for Firefox. When installed you can simply use your arrow keys to sift through the results, which get highlighted in a lovely pallid yellow. There are two ways to open up the result links: you can either hit enter, which opens the link in a new window, or enter plus control which opens it up in a new tab. The extension trumps Google's own keyboard shortcuts program in this regard.
As with many of the other neat extensions we've blogged about recently, Google Keyboard Shortcuts is experimental, which means you have to be registered with Mozilla's add-ons site to download it.
Once installed the Google Keyboard Shortcuts extension lets you browse through search results using your arrow keys.
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