Using Google Chrome Extensions

Google announced in late January that the latest version of their Chrome browser would now handle extensions. Truth be told I have stayed away from using a lot of extensions in Firefox because I did not like the way it slowed down the browser. Since the main reason I use Chrome is to have a quick way of doing basic browsing, I was hesitant to start jumping into a bunch of extensions in this product either. But Google seems to emphasize speed over all else, so I decided to try a couple of the new extensions out.

Once you have the latest version downloaded, the extensions that can be installed are located at https://chrome.google.com/extensions or by going to "Extensions" in the customize and control menu. I had recently started using "LastPass" for password management for web sites, so I was eager to install that in Chrome as well. During the past month, I have also installed "Chromed Bird", "Blog This!", "Remember the Milk for Gmail", and "RSS Subscription Extension Plus." After all of this I have not noticed any slowness in the browser or it locking up on me.

One curious thing is that the applications do not always tend to work immediately. Even with a restart to the browser or the computer, there are times where I am waiting for it to start working correctly. I have not found any information on line about this problem. In face, I installed the "Blog It" extension earlier today and still do not have access to the "Options" for this extension in the controls.

I am most pleased with the Remember the Milk extension. I am totally in Gmail now, but miss the convenience of tasks in Outlook. This gave me the ability to have my tasks in the same view as my email, which I find very useful.

Also I have gravitated to Chromed Bird as my most used Twitter client. I rebuilt my main computer during the past few weeks and have not felt a need to reinstall TweetDeck since the Chrome extension has worked so well.

Finally, I have found the RSS Subscription Extender is pretty useful to loading an RSS feed in to Google Reader. Though there are times when I need to look at actual RSS feed and I am not able to because the extension takes over and reformats things differently.

I am pleased with Google chrome and the extensions now available make the experience even better!