Due to the abundance of free plugin for Chrome available these days, I personally made a list of plugins that I find very useful as far as productivity is concerned. Here they are.

Adblock for Chrome

• AdBlock – This plugin is very useful as it blocks ads from the web pages, thus, allowing you to just concentrate on the web content. This add-on is the primary reason for the popularity of Firefox web browser, and transition to Chrome AdBlock plugin is quite easy. After installing the plugin, it automatically works in blocking ads. What makes it even more exciting for me is that it can be customized to restrain from showing annoying ads on your selected web pages. Moreover, when the program has overlooked several ads, they can be added onto the program in order to completely block those ads from coming out.

• Flash block – This is another useful plugin for Chrome because it blocks the flash content of web pages. It even allows you to decide which websites you will permit to load flash content by placing them in the white list. I find this plugin very advantageous because I work a lot with my computer, and by using this application, it effectively helps in dropping down memory usage as well as a good AdBlock alternative.

Lazarus for Chrome

• Lazarus – Whoever is not annoyed with system crashes or network breakdowns? This is basically time-consuming especially when you are in the middle of filling up forms. A form-recovery application, like Lazarus, will help you out and save all the information when filling up forms and retrieve them with just one click of your mouse, thus saving from starting all over again.

• Snippy – This Chrome plugin is also useful in grabbing web page scraps such as links, images, paragraphs and the like, and save them for future reference. It efficiently cuts back the time in searching for these scraps, hence, you can use the extra time in working on other tasks.

• Time tracker – This simple Chrome add-on helps in tracking down the time used in browsing multiple web pages and has been very helpful in increasing productivity especially for freelance workers like me. Even offline institutions have taken advantage of this program to evaluate their employees’ browsing activity.

Tab Organizer for Chrome

• Tab organizer – This particular Chrome plugin works in organizing your tabs. Aside from that, it also allows you to pick and close several windows and tabs because running multiple applications slows down your PC performance.

• RemindMe – I fully take advantage of this add-on as it allows me to set job reminders while browsing the internet and even allows me to synchronize it between multiple machines. This chrome plugin also allows adding the reminders in the Google calendar. It gives no excuses for undone tasks thus making your boss fully satisfied with your work.

The abovementioned chrome plugins are only few of the clusters of plugins offered by Google. Aside from increasing your work productivity, it fully maximizes your web browser making it more accessible.

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Just follow these tips and see how Chrome improves in performance -

Disables usage statistics of Google Chrome

This option is used to help in Development of Google chrome, It send your usage data to Google so that based on that they can further improve Chrome. But if you are worried about system performance you should disable it . To disable this go to tools menu > Options > Advanced and uncheck the check box which says Send usage data to Google….

Disable DNS Preload in Google Chrome

This will prevent Google chrome to keep DNS info in their cache. Most of time it is unnecessary if you have a good connection of  at least 256kbps or more. It is recommended only for slow dial up connection or Mobile users who actually spend a lot f time in DNS query during browsing.  To disable this you have to go Options > Under the Hood > Privacy – There are 2 checkboxes one says ‘Use a web service to help resolve navigational errors’ and second is ‘ use a prediction service to help complete searches and URL’s typed in address bar’.

You can disable both option or any one of them, first one is used only if you make a mistake while typing any URL while other one is activated by default everytime you start typing a URL.

Disable anti-phishing filter

If you are advanced web user and you know how a phishing site look like or you know how to prevent from them you can disable this option. But if you are not at all comfortable working without phishing filters or don;t want to take risk you should keep it as it is . Disabling this not only saves your CPU time but also save your Internet bandwidth.  This option can also be disabled from Wrench Icon  > Options > Under The Hood > Privacy > Uncheck ‘Enable phishing and malware protection’.

Removes navigational data regularly

All of the browsers cache the Navigation data and other info for faster access to web pages you frequently visit. But if your cache size is big or it contains very old pages which you hardly visit once or twice in a month it will start performing negative for you, as web pages will load faster but they Browsers perform worse when navigation data is saved. So it is important to remove navigational data  frequently. To delete this in Chrome, go to Tools menu and choose the option “Remove navigation data” and choose “Delete data for this period” and not the option “All”. So it will remove old data and will keep recent data do this once in a week at least.

Disable Useless function which we don’t use normally –

To options that are mentioned below you need to edit the properties of Chrome shortcut which you are using to start the browser. To Change it, right click on the Chrome icon and choose “Properties.” this will open a windows with the  “Shortcut” tab, in this tab there is a box called “Destination”. You have to change things in this box itself.

E.g. To disable Java box,

• if  you are using Windows Vista it should go like this — : “C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe -disable-java”
• and if you are using Windows XP: “C:\Documents and Settings\%username% \Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome.exe”

The options which we are adding after the full path of chrome can be used one after the other leaving a space between.   You don’t need to write the entire path every time you are using a new options. Here are the option which can be used -

Disable-dev-tools – This will disable Developers tool which is not used by a normal user for sure.

Disable-logging – This will disable looging of browser activity, This log files are useful only in case of Crash or Other error which prevent you from using browsers. if you are experiencing any such problem and need to know the reason you can enable this option. but in general you don’t need these log files. By disabling this you will certainly save CPU RAM and Hard disk space.

Disable-metrics-system – This option will disable gathering of Usage Statistics data. This is used by Google and we don’t need it any how so you can safely disable this option.

Disable-metrics-reporting – If you disabled Metrics system there is no point in keeping Metrics reporting On, as there won’t be any data to send across. Disable it for sure.

Disable-java – Java on the web is rarely used these days and it greatly slow downs your browsers performance. If you not running any online application which uses Java or Java Applets you can safely disable this feature. This will prevent you from playing number of Online Java Games though. (like Yahoo Games)

Disable-java script – This will disable all kinds of JavaScript from being run on the web pages you visit. This is not recommended at  all as most of the sites these days are using some kind of JavaScript, to display pages. By Disabling JavaScript you will not be able to  see these site properly and they will behave improprly. This is why disabling JavaScript is not recommended.

Disable-plugins – This will disable all plugins including Flash player and other media player. After applying this modification you won’t be able to see a lot of media sites properly including YouTube. If you understand impact of disabling this go ahead and do it otherwise don;t use this option.

Disable-images – This will disable all images on all Webpages you browse, if you are using low bandwidth conection like GPRS or Dial Up it will be very useful for you as it will save a lot of bandwidth for you. This will make your browser an text only browser. So be sure you need it that way before making these changes.

Google has not given much of customization options to it’s chrome users. But Tips mentioned above are quite useful in improving response time of your browser. and some of these are good for saving bandwidth as well.

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• Free Plugin for Chrome to Increase Productivity