When you download a file from a website in Google Chrome, a downloads bar appears at the bottom of the tab where you can monitor the progress of your downloading file. If you’re downloading an executable file (such as files with .exe, .dll, or .bat extensions), first accept the download by clicking Save on the downloads bar. This step helps prevent malicious software from automatically downloading to your computer.

To view your downloads history, click Tools menu, then select Downloads, open the Download page (you can also press the hotkey Ctrl + J or type chrome://downloads/ in the address bar), as it is shown in the screenshot:

Screenshot: Google Chrome download Manager page

• Pause a download

Open the Download page, click the Pause link for the download.

• Cancel a download

Open the Download page, select the downloaded file, then click Cancel.

• Clear download history

Open the Download page, click the Clear all link.

Change the default download location for Google Chrome

By default, Google Chrome sets your download location to /Documents and Settings/<user>/My Documents/Downloads. To set a specific location, please follow these steps:

1. Click Tools menu, then select Options.
2. Click the Minor Tweaks tab (or Under the Hood if you’re using Google Chrome Beta).
3. Click the Browse button in the Downloads section and choose a download location.
4. If you’d rather choose a specific location for each download, please check the Ask where to save each file before downloading option.
5. Click the Close button.

Automatically open downloaded files

If you want files that have the same file type as the one you’re downloading to always open after they’re done downloading, click the menu arrow next to the file button in the downloads bar, then select Always open files of this type, as it is shown in the screenshot below:

Screenshot: Automatically open downloaded files in Google Chrome

To prevent potentially malicious files from automatically downloading to your computer, this option isn’t available for executable file types, such as those with .exe, .dll, or .bat extensions.,

Very kind source: http://www.chromefans.org/chrome-tutorial/how-to-manage-my-downloads-in-google-chrome.htm

We recently announced the availability of developer tools for Google Chrome. We are now releasing ChromeDevTools, which enables JavaScript debugging using Eclipse.

You can set breakpoints, inspect variables and evaluate expressions all from within Eclipse. The screenshot shows the debugger in action stopped at a breakpoint.

The project is fully open sourced on a BSD-license and consists of two components, an SDK and a debugger. The SDK provides a Java API that enables communication with Google Chrome over TCP/IP. The debugger is an Eclipse plugin that uses the SDK and enables you to debug JavaScript running in Google Chrome from the Eclipse IDE.

We hope this project will help web app developers and welcome feedback as well as contributions.

An interesting article is posted on Google Chrome’s offical blog. Here’s it;

When we launched Chrome Experiments in March, we wanted to create a showcase for innovative uses of web browsers and JavaScript. It was also our hope that artists and programmers from around the world would be inspired to submit their own experiments. Today, we’re excited to announce that Chrome Experiments — which started out as nineteen experiments at launch — now points to fifty very impressive JavaScript experiments.

We’d like to send a huge thank you to the community for submitting such great work over the last five months. And we’re thrilled to see many new submissions by developers from around the world, from Lithuania to Brazil to Australia. As the new generation of JavaScript engines make the web faster, we hope that you’re enjoying the creative possibilities as much as we are. Some of our favorite new experiments include Depth of Field, Wavy Scrollbars, JavaScript Canvas Raytracer, and Bomomo.

The 50th Chrome Experiment, Sebastian Deutsch’s 100 Tweets, shows a hint of the future by using the HTML5 canvas and audio tags. The audio tag, which is supported in Google Chrome Beta, allows audio playback without a plug-in.

We’re very excited about HTML5 becoming standard in modern browsers. If you’re thinking about submitting an experiment to Chrome Experiments, we’d love to see some innovative uses of this new standard. We’re especially psyched about the video and audio tags.

If you haven’t checked out Chrome Experiments recently, we hope that you take some time and explore all the latest experiments. Please keep the experiments coming, and, hopefully, we’ll see you again at 100.

Two days ago I was visiting Google Chrome’s official blog that contains articles which are written by Google’s workers (developers, software engineers etc). I found out a new tip about opening links in new tabs. Really useful tip and important for new users who are trying to get accustomed to Chrome. This is where I share this tip:

Tabs can be great for working with multiple pages at the same time. But if you open them by right-clicking links and selecting “Open link in new tab,” you might not have realized that there’s an easier way. Just use your middle mouse button (it might look like a wheel) to click a link, and it will open in a new tab in the background.

“But wait,” you say, “my mouse doesn’t have a middle button!” No problem — another way to get the same effect is to hold down the Ctrl key while clicking (with the left mouse button) on a link.

(If clicking the middle button on a link doesn’t open it, your mouse may be set to use the middle button for something else. You can configure your mouse settings by going to the Windows Control Panel.)

Source: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/08/tip-opening-links-in-new-tabs.html

Nowadays Google’s developers are so occupied to make Chrome faster. Rarely they launch new BETAs and plug-ins to carry it out. Here’s a new article from them.

Since our last major update of Google Chrome in May, we’ve been hard at work improving some of its most used and loved features. Today, we’re releasing a new beta for you to try. Not only is it speedier than ever, but we’ve also given the browser a little bit of design whimsy that we hope will bring some color and delight to your day.

This new beta is fitted with a customizable New Tab page, an improved Omnibox and a few basic themes that allow you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns and images. We’ve also built HTML5 capabilities into this release, as well as a few other nifty technical improvements that will help Google Chrome make the most of your network connection.

You can learn more on the Google Chrome Blog, or download the beta version of Google Chrome to give these new features a whirl. Being on the beta channel gives you a sneak preview of things to come with occasional rough edges, but it’s a great way for us to quickly churn out new features and get your feedback.

For more check this link out:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/speedier-spiffier-beta-for-google.html

Also check this article which you can read by clicking the following link:
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-beta-why-slow-down-when-you-can.html

There’s a brand new beta for you to try out today. As always, we continue to focus on speed, and this beta release shows over 30% improvement on both the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks over our current stable channel release. We’ve also improved two of the most loved and most used features of Google Chrome: the New Tab page and the Omnibox. Plus, we decided to add a little bit of style by allowing you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns, and images.

Customize the new New Tab page
The New Tab page has been one of the most popular features in Google Chrome. It’s also the one that we hear the most about. Embarrassed that checking out lolcats is showing up as your most popular browser pastime? Now you can bump up something dignified and refined into that top Most Visited slot with a simple click and drag of your mouse. You can pin website thumbnails to a particular spot so they don’t disappear even if your browsing habits change. Last but not least, you can hide parts of the page if you don’t want to see them using the layout buttons on the top right of the New Tab page.

Rearrange website thumbnails on the New Tab page by clicking and dragging thumbnails

Pin websites thumbnails to a particular spot

Try the latest and greatest Omnibox
The Omnibox is indisputably an important part of Google Chrome — it helps you get to the sites you’re looking for with just a few keystrokes. With this release, we’ve optimized the presentation of the drop-down menu and added little icons to help you distinguish between suggested sites, searches, bookmarks, and sites from your browsing history.

Tweak the chrome of Google Chrome
We built Google Chrome to be speedy, stable and more secure. Now we’re adding a little bit of style by allowing you to add a theme to your browser. So, if you’ve been dying for a browser that reminds you of the Friendly Confines, or if you just want the comfort of your favorite blanket when you’re browsing the web, now you can have it. Of course, if baseball or quilting isn’t your thing, you can change the theme of your browser by visiting the Themes Gallery. There is still some testing to do — we’re only launching some very basic themes and there are still some kinks to work out, but we will add more themes in the future as we roll this out to the stable version.

A sneak peek at the woody “Desktop” theme

…and your favorite website thumbnails basking on a grassy field

Experience HTML5 capabilities
We’re always trying to further push the things you can do in the browser. For example, we’ve started building HTML5 capabilities into this beta release, including video tag functionality and web workers.

Speed, Speed, and more Speed
Beyond the improvements in JavaScript execution in this latest beta, there are a host of other improvements that should help Google Chrome make the most of your network connection. For example, when you open a new web page while other web pages are still loading, Google Chrome is now smarter about prioritizing the requests for the new page — for instance, fetching text, images, and video for your new page — ahead of the requests from the older pages. Loading pages on this beta release should also be faster than ever with DNS caching, more efficient DOM bindings, and using V8 for proxy auto-config.

To try out these new features, you need to get on the beta channel. This means that your version of Google Chrome will regularly get updated with new speed enhancements, features, and bug fixes before most users see them. The beta channel provides a sneak preview of things to come with occasional rough edges, but it’s a great way for us to quickly churn out new features and get your feedback.

If you’re interested in giving all these fresh new features a whirl, download the beta version of Google Chrome.

We are having a considerable amount of extensions being developed now for Google Chrome. Last time I posted about the Gtalk Extension for using Google Talk directly from your browser and it has already got more than 1300 downloads.

Today i am posting about a couple of extensions released for facebook. One of them is the Facebook Notifications Extension which simply fetches your notifications from facebook and displays in the toolstrip of your browser. The other one is called the FastBook Extension which adds some sort of shortcuts to your facebook page.

Since extensions are not yet supported for stable or beta users, you would be required to switch to the dev channel in order to install the extension and use the command line ––enable-extensions in your google chrome shortcut target.

FaceBook Notifications

A handy little plugin which when installed adds a Facebook button to your toolstrip. The extension would travel to facebook and retrieve the notifications list for you. Ofcourse, you must be logged into Facebook in order to get the extension to work. The extension would only return the number of notifications you have and not the notifications itself. Once you click on the facebook logo in the toolstrip, it will take you to your Facebook homepage.

Download : Facebook Notifications Extension – For Chrome Dev 3.0.195.0 + – V: 0.2

For support, troubleshooting , latest updates, suggestions and details please refer to the Facebook Notifications Support Thread.

FastBook – Facebook Shortcut

This extension adds some sort of shortcuts to your Facebook page. It brings up a right click context menu when you click on any of your friend’s name. It also supports some predefined keyword shortcuts.

Features:

• Allows to quickly send a friend message
• Keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation
• View photos quick
• Twitter your friends facebook page
• Poke your friends

Download : Fastbook Extension – For Chrome Dev 3.0.195.0+ – V: 3.0

Source: http://www.chromeplugins.org

Google Chrome contains many new features that can be harnessed by developers and webmaster to deliver a better end-user experience. The JavaScript virtual machine used by Google Chrome also, the V8 JavaScript engine, has features such as dynamic code generation, hidden class transitions and precise garbage collection. This means that you can create more complex and more intensive AJAX applications with fewer speed and processing constraints with V8 engine.

Test your website in Google Chrome

If you are a web developer or webmaster, there are several useful tools to help you test your website in Google Chrome:

• JavaScript Debugger

Click the Page icon, and then select Developer > Debug JavaScript to open the JavaScript Debugger window. You can also press the hotkey Ctrl+Shift+L. Type help for a list of commands. There is an article Sample debug session with Google Chrome JavaScript debuger from alexatnet.com.



• JavaScript console

JavaScript console is a component of Google Chrome web inspector that analyzes the JavaScript code and any script errors associated with a specific webpage element. To launch JavaScript console window, click Page icon, and then select Developer > JavaScript console (or press Ctrl+Shift+J).

• Web Inspector

Right-click on any component on a web page and then select Inspect element to launch the web inspector. You’ll be able to see the elements and resources associated with the component on which you clicked, including a hierarchy view of the DOM and a JavaScript console.



• Task Manager

Use the Task Manager to get details (memory, CPU, and network) about all running Google Chrome processes, or to force a misbehaving tab or application to close. To open the task manager, click the Page menu icon, then select Developer > Task Manager (or press Shift+Esc).



• Other shortcuts
  • about:
  • about:dns
  • about:plugins
  • about:memory
  • view-cache:[URL]
  • view-source:[URL]

Type any of the following shortcuts in the address bar to see more information:

Source: http://www.chromefans.org/chrome-tutorial/how-to-test-my-web-site-in-google-chrome.htm