Those of you that know me know that I primarily use Google Chrome as my primary web browser, and have been using it for quite a while now. To me, Chrome’s convenience and speed outweigh the resource usage.

I find that Chrome makes me more productive than most other browsers do, as a huge part of my day is spent on the laptop, and usually browsing the web for research, etc.

A lot of people prefer Firefox for the use of it’s plugins (Firefox has a TON of plugins), but Chrome’s extension gallery is growing day by day, and a lot of useful plugins have been ported from Firefox to Chrome.

Here’s some Chrome’s plugins that make my day a little more productive:

• AdThwart - Uses the AdBlock+ engine from Firefox to block annoying popups, and ads. (AdBlock works just as well on Chrome, but not AdBlock+)
• AutoPager Chrome – Automatically loads the next page on a website with multiple pages (i.e. Google) just by scrolling to near the bottom of the page
• Chromed Bird – Twitter client
• Feedly – I was looking for a good RSS reader forever, and I was finally satisfied when I came across this. It uses Google Reader’s API to pull your RSS feeds from Google, and displays it in a really nice, organized, presentable view
• Firebug Lite – A port of Firebug, from Firefox. Not as clean as the original Firebug, but still useful. I use it for checking over my code when I design websites, etc. Usually I leave it disabled until I need it.
• IE Tab – Allows you to run Internet Explorer’s engine within Chrome to be compatible with websites who require Internet Explorer (like sites that use ActiveX). I keep this one disabled as well until I need it
• One Number – checks Google Reader, Gmail, Google Voice, and Google Wave for your inbox updates
• Xmarks Bookmarks Sync – Yes. I’m aware that Chrome is able to sync bookmarks natively, but I like Xmarks for the reason that I can have those same bookmarks on Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc. Chrome’s built-in bookmarks synchronization is really good, but as far as I know, it’s limited only to sync bookmarks within Chrome.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions is a good place to find extensions for Google Chrome.

1) Use Xmarks to synch with your IE/FF/Opera/whatever else
Sign up here

2) Upgrade your Google Chrome Browser to 4.0.201.1 by following the steps here. Now, all you need to do is run your Chrome browser with the “–enable-sync” flag, and go to “Wrench”->”Sync my bookmarks…”

Now, all I ask for is Adblock plus…

Also, yesterday, the Chrome crew released a beta out for next Chrome. Apparently they improved the javascript execution speeds, as well as add the ability to move around the thumbnails in the “new tab” page, and pin them in a certain spot. They added a few features to the Omnibox too: (from Google)

• A star icon  appears next to bookmarked sites.
• A clock icon  appears next to sites from your browsing history.
• A magnifying glass icon  appears next to searches, including suggested searches if you have suggestions turned on.
• A globe icon  appears next to suggested sites, when you have suggestions turned on.

HTML5 support has been added too, which should be cool, because people are slowly starting to switch to HTML5, which has some cool stuff like tagging, etc.

Lastly, they added the ability to change the look of Chrome, or change “the chrome of Google Chrome”, as Google put it, which doesn’t really add any functionality, but hey, if you don’t like the look of the current Chrome, you’re in luck.

You can read more about the new version of Chrome on the Google Chrome blog: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-beta-why-slow-down-when-you-can.html

Now that I’m done, I can install the beta =)