Of the total time that you on your computer in a day, a good portion of that is spent online… perhaps a major portion, right? Selecting a browser  then is an important choice.

If you are a windows user, you start off with Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) until you discover (or get shown) that this is not your only choice. This is Part 2 of an ongoing blog series for me to highlight points about MY browser of choice – Google Chrome. If you missed it you can see [Part 1] by clicking that link.

Google Chrome first came out in 2008. The designers had a several goals in mind one of which was a a clean interface. When you look at it, you can see that every pixel was really thought out in a minmalist, “only what you really need” way. As another example of minimalist design that works,
just look at the google home page – “less is more” concept in design often works quite well.

In the screenshot (below) of ActiveRain in Chrome, you can see a little about the browser layout. The individual tabs can be closed by clicking the x on each. Also, you can drag a tab to reorder the sequence and you can drag it right out of the window to create a new separate window (e.g. sometimes you want to see two sites side by side)

The address box is where you (obviously) go to type in a website. But here’s is where chrome shines! They call it an omnibox because of all thatthe one box can do for you. First of all, it learns your frequented sites. I  can type in a SINGLE letter, e.g. A for activerain and it suggests www.activerain.com for me and I all I need to do is hit enter. Note, you might say “my other browser (insert Firefox, IE, or otherwise here) does that too.” But does it? or do you have to find and click the item in the dropdown list? Chrome puts the best choice right there and all you need to do is press enter. Some sites  will compete as your  favorite for the “first letter only trick”, so you’ll have to type TWO or maybe THREE characters. Example. AM and enter gets me to amazon.com.

With this in mind, you hardly need your bookmarks bar. You can have oneif you want, but I find I rarely use mine now.

The other very cool thing about the omnibox is that it has google search built right into it. So you do NOT need to first go to google.com and then type a search. Type your search right in the omnibox and the results will be immediately shown to you.

Talking about well thought out design and good use of your SCREEN real estate. If you don’t watch yourself, your browser window will look something like
what is seen here. Seems like everyone has a “free toolbar” that they want you to install – Yahoo, Bing, AOL, your antivirus program, etc, etc. Just say “no” You don’t need them and besides they take up system resources you can
better put to use. Laptops especially do not have the vertical resolution that a desktop computer has. A desktop computer typically has 1280 pixels of
vertical space whereas a laptop usually has around 700 pixels. With all the toolbars installed (the screen shot is an exaggeration, but I’ve easily and often seen half this much in helping users), there is little space left for actual content.

Stay tuned for more articles in this series. If you need to download the chrome browser, use the link below.

Google Chrome (my choice) www.google.com/chrome