Google Chrome + remapped keys = True Love
I know I’m a little late to this party, but I have fallen in love with Google Chrome. I have made it my main browser at work and now at home. Once it’s available for Mac, there’s a good chance I’ll make the transition there, too.
The thing about Chrome is, 90% of the time what I want to do with the browser is google for something. With Chrome this is so optimized, it’s the closest thing on Windows that’s felt like QuickSilver. This is what I find myself doing multiple times per hour at work:
alt-tabto Chromectrl-topens a new tab and automatically places the cursor in the multi-purpose address/search bar- type search text, hit enter, done
Only then, when the search results are up, do I have to reach for my mouse and select one. And in fact, often when typing the search criteria Chrome will display the top search results as I type, allowing me to select one with the arrow keys and bring up a search result without ever touching the mouse.
On a related note, and I’m definitely late to this party – I can’t believe I’ve lived this long without remapping my Caps Lock and left Ctrl keys! I’ve done this at work and now at home, and it feels like typing on silk!
The one twist is that I share this home XP box with my wife, so the registry key I edited was:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Keyboard Layout
Instead of the local machine. This seems to work.
A couple nice quick Chrome key-combos (many of these are not specific to Chrome, of course):
ctrl-t– new tabctrl-shift-t– reopen most-recently-closed tabctrl-w– close current tabctrl-tab– next tabctrl-shift-tab– previous tabctrl-h– historyctrl-j– downloadsctrl-d– bookmark current pagectrl-b– show/hide bookmarks barctrl-shift-b– bookmark managershift-Esc– Google Chrome Task Manager (shows mem/CPU/network for each Chrome process (each tab is a separate process))
I still like Firefox, especially when I’m using the Firebug plugin. But there’s just something about Chrome, so slick, so clean…
Update: a coworker just suggested I search for about:internets in Chrome:
Brad Cupit:
Chrome is terrific, especially when combined with Google Search’s Keyboard Shortcuts: http://www.google.com/experimental/#BetaShortcuts These shortcuts update the Google search result page so you can use keyboard shortcuts and pick the link you want. (Also, as an undocumented feature, press SHIFT+ENTER to open the link in a new tab.) No mouse and super fast!
30 June 2009, 9:19 pm