Chrome handles most browsing tasks like a champ, but the browser itself can slow down for various reasons. If you’re a Chrome “power user”, you might have noticed that its startup time takes a hit once you have a dozen or so extensions and apps installed.¹

Chrome spins off every single app, extension, and tab as a separate process, resulting in a dozen or more processes to launch simultaneously when you start the browser. With every new extension or app, the number of “default” chrome processes increases and so does the startup time.

Thankfully, this problem can be solved by making use of “background apps”, which are unique to Chrome. As you probably guessed from the name, a background Chrome app will keep running in the background, even after you close all the Chrome windows. The obvious benefit of a background app is that it feels more native on your desktop compared to a regular web app. But there’s an added benefit as well – a background Chrome app will keep some of the chrome processes running all the time. So the next time you start Chrome, only a few extra chrome processes will need to be created, resulting in a faster startup. If you miss the good old days when Chrome used to start as fast as Notepad, simply installing a background app will take you back to those days. There are literally no other steps required.

For whatever reason, there aren’t many background apps available in the Chrome Web Store – you can find the few that are available with a simple search. The most popular of the background apps is one which you probably already know about – Google’s Offline Gmail app. If you’re using it, you really didn’t need to read this post. Please stop being furious and enjoy some kitty goodness.

^[1] People using SSDs are unlikely to have this problem, as SSDs are much faster than regular hard disk drives.

Related posts:

1. Use Chrome As A [VERY Barebones] Music Player
2. Bring the “Reload Image” feature of Firefox and Opera to Chrome
3. Google Announces It’s Own Operating System

Improve Chrome’s Startup Time By Installing A Background App | PC Tonic

Online images often fail to load when you’re on a slow or flaky connection. Whenever this happens, most browsers (except Firefox, which shows the image title) replace the actual image with a broken image icon.

The most obvious way to combat this problem is to reload the webpage, and hope that the image loads that time. Naturally, this solution sucks.

Firefox and Opera handle this issue much better with a simple context menu entry. When you encounter a broken image on either of these browsers, simply right-click over it and select the “Reload Image” option. The image will appear magically, without you having to load the entire page again.

Chrome doesn’t have this nifty feature, but what it does have is a plethora of extremely useful extensions that bring almost every missing feature to the awesome browser. To get the above feature in Chrome, you have to install an extension named, why yes, Reload Image! Install this extension now, and the broken images won’t annoy you half as much as before.

P.S. This has got nothing to do with the extension, but I’ve got to say this – Chrome has an exceptionally ugly broken image icon. If anyone from the Chrome team ever reads this, it’s a personal request to change it to something better.

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Bring the “Reload Image” feature of Firefox and Opera to Chrome | PC Tonic

The status bar of a browser is a quick way to view the destination URL of any hyperlink, but it has little use beyond that. Hence, having it turned on all the time and occupy some vertical screen space isn’t really a good idea.

Chrome was the first browser to introduce an “intelligent” status bar – one that pops up only when it needs to show some browser action. Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 have since followed suit, but Opera and Safari are still stuck with the old style always-on-or-always-off status bars.

Thankfully, both Opera and Safari support extensions, and there’s a different extension available for each browser that introduces the Chrome-style status bar to it.

Safari 5+ users can get the Ultimate Status Bar extension from the Extensions Gallery (you’ll have to search for it, because stupid Apple doesn’t provide a separate page for each extension).

Opera 11+ users should get the Popup Statusbar extension instead.

I have only tested the Safari extension of the two, and it works as advertised. The Opera extension does have a very high rating, so it must be working perfectly well too.

Do note that neither of these extensions won’t automatically remove the old-style status bars, so you will have to do that yourself. Use the Ctrl+/ (Command+/ on OS X) combination in Safari to hide the status bar. In Opera, hit the Menu button on the top left, go to Toolbars, and uncheck the “Status bar” option. Opera’s status bar does have some buttons for Unite, Link, Turbo, and some page viewing options – if you use any of those buttons, better not install the mentioned extension or disable the status bar.

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Bring Chrome-style Popup Status Bars To Safari And Opera | PC Tonic

TIPP10 is a cross-platform, open source app that aims to be your touch typing tutor. Like the previously mentioned TypingWeb, TIPP10 throws a series of typing ‘lessons’ at you, with gradually increasing difficulty levels, while helping you out with hints and tips all the time.

I have tested out both the apps, and I much prefer TIPP10 to TypingWeb. First of all, it’s a desktop app, so it’s faster, doesn’t require an account, and is available all the time – Internet or not. Second, TIPP10 senses the characters that you mistype more frequently, and repeats them more during tutorials to get you accustomed. This is a really cool feature, and I have found myself getting more conscious and better with every tutorial.

Once you’ve completed a lesson, TIPP10 displays your score and charts your progress into graphs and other cool visualizations. All your lessons are saved, hence the data aggregates over time and the details add up.

As an added bonus, there’s a bubble- shooter-like game included in which you’ve to type the falling characters before they hit the bottom. You’ll find it under Go > ABC-Game.

Needless to say, TIPP10 is immensely useful for anyone who struggles at touch typing. And believe me, touch typing has its own perks.

Get TIPP10 from here. Windows users may also grab the portable version available at PortableApps.com.

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Hone Your Typing Skills With TIPP10 | PC Tonic

Direct Connect (DC++) hubs are quite popular for sharing data among logged in users, especially so in residential college networks. A DC++ client is obviously required to tap into such hubs, with the most popular options being the official DC++ client, Strong DC++, and Apex DC++.

While all of the above clients provide perfectly usable Windows installers, did you know that you can actually use them as portable apps too?!

What’s the big deal about portable apps, huh?

Okay, so a portable app does look and work like a normal installed app. From that perspective, it’s really not that different. But! It’s portable, and that’s what magical about it. It won’t add junk registry items to your computer. It’s just one single folder that you can put anywhere (Dropbox!), use on any number of computers, and delete anytime.

Portable apps do have poor system integration, but that hardly matters in the case of DC++ client – all you do with the app is open it, join a hub or three, and share your files like crazy. Absolutely no system integration is necessary.

Get those portables!

We shall be covering more about the awesomeness of portable apps (including the PortableApps.com platform) in future posts, but this post is here to help you find portable builds for your favourite DC++ client. So lets get started.

Official DC++

You’ll find all the available DC++ builds on this SourceForge page. Click on the version number (currently 0.782), and download the .zip file from the list. Once downloaded, unzip the folder contents to somewhere on your computer (again, I’d recommend the Dropbox or SugarSync folder, if you use either), and create a shortcut for the DCPlusPlus.exe file on your desktop or taskbar.

Strong DC++

Visit the Strong DC++ files on SourceForge, click on the latest version number (currently 2.42), and get the 32/64 bit .7z file depending on your OS. Rest of the process is same as above. Do make sure that you’ve an archiving app like PeaZip, that can unpack the .7z file.

Apex DC++

Again, say hello to the SourceForge page for Apex DC++. Click on the latest version (currently 1.4.2), and download the ApexDC++_x.x.x_slim.7z file, x.x.x being the version number. The other .7z archives contains the source files, and is not meant for normal users.

Do note that Apex DC++ will add itself to the “Installed Programs” list, allowing you to uninstall it from the Control Panel.

There are, of course, many other DC++ clients, and you can quite possibly find their portable builds with a bit of Googling and searching their SourceForge archives.

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How To Get The Portable Versions Of Popular DC++ Clients | PC Tonic

UPDATE: In a recent move to streamline itself, Google has shuttered the entire Labs unit, which includes this particular bot.

If you’re a regular Google Talk user, here’s a useful chat bot that you should add to you chat list now – the Google Talk Guru, straight from the Google Labs. You can “friend” the bot by adding guru@googlelabs.com to your contact list.

Guru helps you get some specific information like sports results, current weather and forecast, currency conversions, word definitions, etc, just by chatting with it. For example, if you want the weather stats for your city, just initiate a chat with the Guru bot and type “weather <city-name>”. Guru will search Google and almost instantaneously deliver back the stats to you. Not revolutionary, but useful to have nonetheless.

Here’s a list of the queries supported by Guru, along with examples (screenshot taken from its homepage):

I can confirm that most of the stuff works as expected, however Guru is absolutely horrendous when it comes to queries regarding tennis (my favourite sport). You’re in luck if you like football better.

[via Mashable]

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Get Quick-fire Information With The Google Talk Guru [Update: Discontinued] | PC Tonic

Text Only, Please! is a no-frills Chrome extension that strips out junk from most web pages, and lets you focus on the actual article content. Once you have installed the extension, you will find a new icon next to the address bar. The next time you come across a website filled with junk ads, just click the button and the page will be instantly rendered in text-only mode. The extension uses the API of ViewText.org web service to achieve this, and the rendering is quite fast and satisfactory.

Do note that the extension doesn’t work on JavaScript-heavy sites (like the redesigned Gawker blogs) for now, but that’s an issue with ViewText and other similar “uncluttering” services.

Another nifty feature of Text Only, Please! is that you can right click on any link and select the “Open in text-only mode” option, and, you guessed it right, a clutter free version of the link will automatically open in a new tab.

As Gouthaman from the PC Geek Blog notes, this extension can also come really handy if you are on a very slow connection, or have to survive on a capped bandwidth. Being a victim of both ( ), I can attest to that.

Back to the extension. While the extension is quite useful as it stands now, it certainly could do with a few more features. Thankfully, my friend Shankar Ganesh, who developed this extension, is planning to add keyboard shortcuts and instant web-to-PDF output through future updates!

Update 31/03/11 : Shankar has now added a keyboard shortcut – Shift+T Alt+T – for rendering the current page in text mode.

Text Only, Please! is Chrome-only, and a useful extension to have at your disposal.

[via Killer Tech Tips]

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2. How to Combine Multiple Bookmarklets and Reduce Browser Toolbar Clutter [GT Posts]
3. Delete Your Firefox Sync Data (If You’ve Switched To Chrome)

“Text Only, Please!” Removes Clutter From Online Articles [Chrome] | PC Tonic

There is something about oil paintings that makes me a big fan of them. Sometimes I come across an image, and I am instantly like, that should have been oil painted!

If you are like me, there’s some good news – you can create an oil painting out of any photo using the free Paint.NET! While Paint.NET is Windows-only, there is an identical app called Pinta for OS X and Linux users.

Once you have installed Paint.NET / Pinta, all you have to do is load the photo into it, and then go to Effects > Artistic > Oil Painting. In the new pop-up window, you can adjust two settings,

• coarseness – make the photo look as jagged or as smooth as you like
• brush size – bigger brush size gives less details and vice versa

The effects are applied to the image in real-time, so you can actually see the changes you are making. Once you’re satisfied with the settings, click OK and save the image via File > Save (use File > Save As if you want to retain the original image). Tada!

You will also notice that Paint.NET and Pinta support two other artistic effects, namely ink sketch and pencil sketch, so you can try them out if they are more of your thing.

The oil painting mode of Paint.NET / Pinta isn’t as feature rich as the ones in, say, Photoshop or GIMP, but it’s lighting fast and is a handy feature to have nonetheless.

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How To Easily Create An Oil Painting Version Of An Image Using Paint.NET | PC Tonic

One of my favorite features in Firefox has always been the Sync extension. Back when I was a Firefox user, Firefox Sync was my online safe, taking care of passwords for 70-something online accounts, autofill data, and tons of bookmarks. I used to be very jumpy, reinstalling Windows even when the slightest shell crash or blue screen happened, and losing all my local data every time. Without Sync, I’d be pretty screwed.

Anyway, I have fully switched to Chrome since a few months, and today I suddenly remembered I don’t need my Firefox Sync account anymore. An inactive account containing sensitive information is not a good thing at all, so I went ahead and deleted it.

Deleting your Sync profile is quite easy. Just go to this Mozilla page, fill in your username and password, and click on the “Permanently Delete My Account” button. Simple as that. Do it if you were a Firefox user, but have since switched to Chrome (I know many who have).

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Delete Your Firefox Sync Data (If You’ve Switched To Chrome) | PC Tonic

You might have noticed that playing a video on a freshly installed VLC player usually triggers a ‘”Building font cache…” pop-up that stays for some time before allowing the video to play.

Technically, the window should show up only once, thereby making it a lot less irritating that it’d otherwise be. However, an unresolved bug in VLC keeps randomly triggering this pop-up when it shouldn’t, and makes us all wait so much more to watch our movies!

The VLC team suggests disabling subtitles as a temporary fix to this bug. If you can live without subtitles, here’s how to proceed:

• Open VLC player, and go to Tools –> Preferences (or hit Ctrl + P).
• In the Preferences window, switch from “Simple settings” to “All settings” at the bottom left corner (see screenshot below).
• Go to Video –> Subtitles/OSD, and change the “Text rendering module” to “Dummy font rendering function”. Click on the Save button when done.

Click to view full size

Once a new version of VLC comes out, you can re-enable subtitles by repeating the above steps and setting the “Text rendering module” to “Default”.

Everyone else, who can’t do without subtitles, can only hope for a quick fix soon.

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Temporarily fix “Building font cache” pop-up in VLC player | PC Tonic