- If It Is Everything, You Should Use It for Everything
- And Then There Are Page Controls
- More Customization and Controls
- Closing the Door
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
More Customization and Controls
The other menu available in the Chrome interface, the Tools menu, is found under the wrench icon. This customization and controls menu is much like the Page menu; you have access to point-and-click controls as well as keyboard shortcuts that make navigation much faster. Table 4.2 outlines the capabilities found in this menu.
Table 4.2. Chrome Customization Controls
|
Command |
Purpose |
Keyboard Shortcut |
|
New Tab |
Opens a new tab within the browser window |
Ctrl+T |
|
New Window |
Opens a new browsing window |
Ctrl+N |
|
New Incognito Window |
Opens a new incognito window |
Ctrl+Shift+N |
|
Always Show Bookmark Bar |
Enables the Bookmark bar directly below the Omnibox |
Ctrl+B |
|
History |
Shows your surfing history |
Ctrl+H |
|
Bookmark Manager |
Opens the Bookmark Manager |
Ctrl+Shift+B |
|
Downloads |
Opens the Download folder |
Ctrl+J |
|
Clear Browsing Data |
Clears the history and other stored data from your browser’s cache |
None |
|
Import Bookmarks and Settings |
Imports bookmarks and settings saved in another browser |
None |
|
Options |
Opens a new window that provides many options (shown in Figure 4.8). These options are discussed in the following sections. |
None |
|
About Google Chrome |
Opens a dialog box with information about Google Chrome (including version number) |
None |
|
Help |
Opens Google’s help pages |
F1 |
|
Exit |
Closes the browser, including all open tabs |
Alt+F4 |
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Figure 4.8 The Options command opens an additional window of customization options for Chrome.
The Basics Tab
When the Options window opens, it should automatically open to the Basics tab. Four sections on this tab give you options for how Chrome behaves:
On Startup—This section of the menu gives you options for how Chrome should behave when it’s opened. You can choose to have it start on the home page, to restore tabs that were open when the browser was last closed, or to open a list of specified websites. This list includes any websites that are important to you. Just select Open the Following Pages and then click Add. A new window like the one in Figure 4.9 appears. Select the website you want to have opened, or type the address of the desired website into the text box provided. You can enter as many websites as you want.
Figure 4.9 Add specific websites to open automatically each time you open the Chrome browser.
- Home Page—This option allows you to set how you want your browser home page to appear. You can choose the new tab that opens your nine most visited websites, or you can set a specific page to open as your home page. The other option that you find here is the option to show the Home Page button on the toolbar.
Default Search—Google is the search engine for Chrome by default, but you do have other options, and this is where you set those options. You can choose from Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, AOL, and Ask. And if you click the Manage button, a Search Engines window opens that you can use to add additional search engines to your options, as shown in Figure 4.10.
Figure 4.10 Even though Google is the default search engine, you can choose the search engines that you’re most comfortable using.
- Default Browser—This is where you make Chrome your default browser. If Chrome is already your default browser, a green notification appears in this section. If there is no notification, click the Make Google Chrome My Default Browser button and Chrome replaces whatever browser you currently have set as default.
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The Minor Tweaks Tab
The next tab in the Chrome Options window is the Minor Tweaks tab. This tab provides options that let you set three of the ways in which Chrome behaves. These include
- Download Location—This is where you set your download location. By default, Chrome downloads go into a Downloads folder on your hard drive, but you can choose to be asked where files should go each time a new download starts.
Passwords—Here is where you choose whether Chrome should offer to save website passwords for you. You can also view the websites and usernames for which the passwords are saved (shown in Figure 4.11) when you click the Show Saved Passwords option.
Figure 4.11 Click Show Saved Passwords in the Passwords section of the Minor Tweaks tab to see a list of the websites for which you have saved usernames and passwords.
- Fonts and Languages—Use the button in this section to open the Fonts and Languages dialog box, where you can manage the fonts and languages that appear in Chrome.
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The Under the Hood Tab
The final tab in the Options window is a bit different from the first two. This tab contains multiple check boxes and additional buttons that allow you to set your privacy preferences, network proxy settings, web content settings, and security settings.
Most of these settings should be left at the default level unless you have a specific need to change them. For example, phishing and malware protection is enabled by default. You can disable it, but then you won’t get the phishing and malware notifications and protection that are automatically enabled in Chrome.
Still, if you need to change these settings, you can return to defaults at any time by clicking the Reset to Default button at the bottom of the screen. This resets all the option settings that you have changed.