Chromed Up

Finally got round to it: Firefox has been retired in this house and the machines are now Chrome-shiny. Quite a job, given the several machines which have logins for everyone residing chez-FG. I've been using Firefox with Xmarks (since back when it was Foxmarks) for yonks, but XMarks is looking like a bit of a security-risk for password sync, Chrome does native bookmark sync and Firefox with multiple add-ons takes about an hour to spring into life. Which is a highly unsatisfactory and retrograde state of affairs for a web-browser but, of course, there's no such thing as 'just a web browser' any more.  And I haven't looked at the Chrome eco-system for a while: My biggest fear - that the extensions couldn't match what I use in Firefox - have turned out to be (almost) unfounded.

So, what have I learnt?

• The standard Chrome install works only for the user who installs it - which is a right pain to discover half-way through the process.  There is a multi-user install, but it's not exactly obvious.
  
• Google won't let you create accounts for children - so if you want Chrome to sync bookmarks across machines, you'll have to lie about their birthdate.
  
• Chrome doesn't do keywords - you have to fudge them through Search Engines

But, on the positive side... Chrome will carry everything you want across from Firefox seamlessly, which enables you to populate the Last Pass extension with saved passwords without hitch.  And the syncing of extensions almost entirely works between installations (ie one or two refuse to, but the rest were fine).  The only extension I really miss is a decent download manager - Down Them All is notably absent from the Chrome Web Store.

After some ferreting around, I think the essential extensions - for me anyway - are:

• Last Pass
  
• AdBlock
  
• IETab (for compatibility with work stuff, mostly)
  
• Shareaholic
  
• Feedly
  
• Evernote Clipper
  
• Amazon Wishlist

A bunch of others - as in the picture - are really no more than shortcuts presented in pretty fashion.  Since I keep stuff like that to hand on the bookmark bar / by keyword, I'm not sure there's a lot of point to it. Looks nice though. No doubt I'll find others with more ferreting, but that seems enough to get me up and running for the moment.

The whole process has still taken me about three hours - but it was less painful than I expected.  And I have no idea what Chrome may keep running in the background, but it's lightning quick compared with Firefox - which will save me back the lost three hours over the next decade or so... 

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