Making the switch from Firefox to Chrome
Original post date Mar 19th, 2012
I’ve always sort-of known that Chrome was a faster browser and less of a memory hog than Firefox. But there were features that I love in Firefox that Chrome did not have and so I’ve clung to it religiously. But, basically with the help a few Chrome extensions and the killer developer tools that Chrome now has I’ve made a successful conversion. And I haven’t looked back. Here are some of things I’ve done to get there gracefully.
Chrome Extensions
Web Developer
This is the port of the well know Web Developer Tool Bar in Firefox and is a must have for developing web apps.
Type-ahead-find
I’ve gotten spoiled in Firefox typing / (forward slash) and ‘ (tick) to do in-page searching. Now I still can.
- Start writing (or press /) to start text search.
- Press ‘ to search only links.
Plus a bunch of cool other features.
Send Page
For some reason there is no way to send the link of the current page you are viewing in Chrome. This extension fixes that by adding the ability with a right click context menu option to “send this page”. Doing so will pop open your default mail client with the subject set and a link to the page set in the body of the email for you.
F5
On the Mac Chrome does not refresh the page with F5. You have to use cmd+r. I prefer hitting F5 for refresh. And this extension does that for me. If you’re on Windows you won’t need this.
Developer Tools
The developer tools that Chrome now has are outstanding. I’ve been really impressed with the features. Seems to have everything Firebug has and more. To activate on Mac opt+cmd+i. On Windows ctrl+shift+j. Or if you’re more of point-and-click type you can mouse your way to settings/tools/developer tools.
Bookmark Keywords
This one was kind of a big deal for me so it deserves a longer explanation. Within the properties of a Firefox bookmark you can assign a keyword like “gt” where for example this bookmark points to your GitHub repo site. This then allows you to type “gt” in the URL bar, hit enter and be taken to that site. I have around 50 or so of these little gems and they are HUGELY productive. I had read somewhere awhile back that keywords don’t make it over in the Chrome bookmark import as Chrome does not support that feature. But it actually does, just in a different way. After running the import bookmarks in Chrome and pulling in your Firefox stuff you will have to look in Preferences/Basics/Manage Search Engines. In there you will see a new Search Engine defined for each bookmark that had a keyword associated with it. A search engine in Chrome consists of a NAME, KEYWORD and URI. And you can add as many as you like. As it turns out this is a nice way to go because you don’t have to create and maintain a bookmark that you never actually click on just for the sole purpose of having a keyword. Additionally, there is not a way in Firefox to say “show me all my keyword shortcuts”. With the search engine feature of Chrome all your keyword shortcuts are all maintained in one area.
And then…
One of the other things I’ve noticed is that there are a tremendous amount of cool extensions now for Chrome. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I last looked but the selection available now is huge. If you haven’t looked in while check it out.
