RGdot

Tag: Chrome

  • Microsoft Edge Chromium

    Microsoft Edge launched in 2015 as a replacement for the fading Internet Explorer. It initially used EdgeHTML which is a proprietary browser engine made by Microsoft. In 2019 the decision was made to the Blink engine which runs Chromium based browsers such as Chrome and Opera.

    The switch over of regular Windows 7 and above users to the new Chromium version will now happen as part of the January updates (due to happen on January 15). This new version will support Chrome extensions that are ported over to the Microsoft Store and have some features exclusive to Microsoft such as access to Microsoft account access built in and PDF notes within the browser, among others.

  • Leaf Simple Notes For Chrome

    Leaf: Simple Notes is another small notes or reminder extension for Google Chrome. Installing the extension follows the familiar permissions based method and the extension’s icon is added to the right of the address bar.

    Click on the icon and the interface is shown. Simply type any text and optionally add relevant details. Notes are stacked to the right of the text area. Click on the header or title of an existing note and the few available options become visible.

    Notes can be dragged and re-ordered. Any note can be moved to the top of the stack. Information on the note’s creation date is also available. A note can be edited by clicking the fourth icon (see screenshot) or by double clicking on it. Notes can of course be deleted.

    A needed more recent addition is the search function. It is also helpful that is a find as you type search.

    Leaf: Simple Notes is not the first minimalist notes extension and perhaps it is too simple but it serves its purpose well.

  • Super Simple Tasks Chrome Extension

    Super Simple Tasks

    Super Simple Tasks as its name implies is a simple Google Chrome extension that is a minimalist tool for creating lists within Chrome.

    As always click the extension icon and the drop down hold the items which can be color coded as a form of tagging, can be marked as done, and can be moved or dragged up and down the list. The user can open the list in a new tab instead of the drop down to get a clearer and better view of it.

    Super Simple Tasks works offline and can use the users’ logged in Google account to sync with other devices and its accompanying Android app. To stay anonymous while working with others Super Simple Tasks has a sharing feature which provides a link to be sent to another user, after clicking the share icon a link in the form of http://supersimpletasks.com/?share=code will be presented, the recipient will use that code to see the list. A list can also be ‘disconnected’ and live exclusively on the device it is typed on. Syncing with Google tasks would make this more useful perhaps but as it is it remains a basic method to keep lists.

  • Notes With AnnoPad Google Chrome Extension

    AnnoPad

    AnnoPad (version:1.5.3) or URL Specific Notepad – AnnoPad to mention its full name is a Google Chrome extension that saves notes in a drop down accessible via its icon much the same way as many other extensions.

    The interface is simple, click on the icon and add a new note. The URL of the current page is automatically saved with the note. The note can be formatted in bold or italic and be an unordered or ordered numbered list. Notes are saved automatically and clicking the back button takes the user back to the notes list.

    It is possible to assign a category to a note however the notes list interface does not show the category. The category is therefore only currently useful in the as you type incremental search. The same search of course finds text in the notes’ content as well. When a page or site is open notes can be filtered to those with a matching address. Saved notes can also be displayed by newest, oldest, page ascending and page descending. The latter two refer to the URLs associated with saved notes.

    AnnoPad’s settings are Export to TXT, Export to PDF and Delete.

  • Lunascape Is The Triple Browser

    Lunascape is described by its author as

    …the world’s only triple engine browser

    As seen by the developers the main strength or selling point of the browser is that every page can be loaded and rendered properly without switching browsers, since 3 browser engines are available within the program. On first thought that is an excellent concept but the user may need more convincing to use Lunascape because switching between open windows of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome, by pressing alt-tab for example, does not add significant time to the process of loading a page.


    Lunascape

    Probably needing to rely on different and interesting features the developers have tried to include some options and ease of use features in the default install. For example it is claimed that Internet Explorer toolbars will work without any problems, using the same browser engine as Microsoft’s browser that might seem obvious, but as with most software that may not always be the case. A set of mouse gestures are included with the ability to set one’s own. Different tabs can be loaded using different engines within the same window. The Bookmarklets located under the Tools menu offer many built-in capabilities. One can go one level up in the site’s structure, check the cookies set by the particular site that is loaded, translate pages, zoom in and out, get a tinyurl for the address, using the Webkit engine rotate the page 90 degrees and many more. Lunascape supports add-ons and a large number of themes or skins are also available. Lunascape comes with an auto hide sidebar that gives access to virtually all its settings by hovering the mouse on the left hand side of the window.

    It will likely find it difficult to compete with the browsers that everybody is more familiar with but Lunascape has most of the features users want or need.
    Another note or two of interest is that the Lunascape download is 9MB for its initial setup file and in the process of installation it downloads approximately 19MB more for the Webkit (the Chrome and Safari engine) and Gecko (the Mozilla/Firefox engine). Also as a sort of crude test I loaded the same page (only 1 tab open) using all engines and recorded the memory usage and they are as follows:

    23MB for Trident
    58MB for Gecko
    23MB for Webkit

    These results are in line with most memory use tests of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome respectively. Requirements are Windows 2000 to Vista and Internet Explorer 6 installed.