Octopus Overlords

Exiting Civ6 often produces a hard crash and always seems to leave a persistent memory error that prevents Firefox from starting or functioning properly without a couple of reboots. I decided to set up Chrome as a backup browser. Even leaving the memory crashes/lockups aside, Firefox has been getting slower and slower, so I'm open to moving entirely to Chrome if I can make it behave the way I want it.

However, I am having some trouble customizing/configuring it. Here are a bunch of questions in no particular order:

There is no menu bar or status bar. Can those be added? Firefox has extensions for that. I find Chrome's interface too minimalist to navigate easily. It's almost as bad as using an Apple product.

Are these available, what are they called, and how do I get them?:

-Navigational Sounds: Add a click when clicking any button. Seems trivial but I really rely on it.
-Rehost Image: Right-click any image and automatically upload it to a hosting service while putting a link on the clipboard.
-Imagus: Enlarge thumbnails and load images/videos from links by simply hovering over them.
-TabMix Plus: Control when links open in a new tab or refresh the existing tab.
-AdBlock Plus: Well, everyone knows ABP.

Those are the add-ons I consider mandatory. I'm not even sure where to find Chrome add-ons -- I did find a control to change its theme, and it seemed that there were some extensions available at the "theme store", but searching didn't turn up anything to perform the functions listed above.

Less important, but still wanted:

-AniWeather: Puts a configurable weather forecast on the status bar.

I'm not sure about a few of them, but I'm sure people will be along with recommendations.

The menu bar is the three dots on the right side.

AdBlock isn't nearly as good as UBlock Origin. I'd also add Ghostery.

Having switched between the two browsers several times over the years, I will say one thing - learn the new browser's strengths rather than trying to force it to work like your old one. A few things will be different, some of them will be better, some worse. It will take getting used to, but it goes both ways.
Should you switch back to Firefox in a few years, you'll find yourself trying to find the Chrome features.

I'm not trying to force it to BE Firefox. Hiding the menu bar behind three dots is dumb design IMO -- I realize web designers hate text for some reason -- but whatever. I can live without a status bar; Firefox nuked theirs, too; I had to use an add-on to get it back. One must always struggle with poor design decisions. It took years to customize Firefox to my liking so I don't expect to like Chrome right out of the box.

However, if it's to become my primary browser Chrome does need to perform those few functions that I listed above -- especially Rehost Image; I use that all the time.

the new, revised Firefox is coming out next month - total engine overhaul.

Given the problems you describe, you're likely better off simply performing a full, clean Windows reinstall.

While reinstalling is obviously a chore, you can at least save yourself from much of the hassle in future by simply using backup software to create a system image after having installed necessary drivers, patches, and apps following a clean install. Doing so makes future Windows reinstallation almost effortless. AOMEI Backupper is a free quick and easy-to-use backup utility that'll do the trick, with plenty of tutorials that walk you through the process.

I agree that CIV should not affect how firefox runs, unless it's some hard drive problems. I'd backup everything and reinstall windows myself.

Kraken wrote:
Less important, but still wanted:

-AniWeather: Puts a configurable weather forecast on the status bar.

I've found extensions that do four of the six things I wanted, so that's not a bad start.

-Reho.st for Chrome does more or less the same thing as Rehost Image for Firefox, although not as transparently. Instead of uploading to Imgur or another host of my choosing, images go to...um, I don't know where they're hosted or how reliably they will persist over the long term. And instead of putting the link on my clipboard, I have to copy it manually from a list of options. But it works.

-HoverZoom+ appears to work as well as Imagus.

-Weather doesn't display the forecast on my (nonexistent) status bar, but it does put it a click away under an icon.

-AdBlockPlus is available, among many other ad blockers.

Still looking for navigational sounds to add that old familiar click, and a tab manager to allow me to open links in a new tab, but apart from that I've bent Chrome mostly to my will.

Navigational Sounds is on that site I first linked for you. Theres a search box on the left. Put in Navigational Sounds and its the top answer Sound on Click..Navigational Sounds.

Thanks, that works.

Hover Zoom works fine on some sites but not at all on others, whereas the Firefox equivalent works everywhere, so that's a bit frustrating.

I still want to define when pages open in a new tab. Specifically, if I load a bookmark, I want it to open in a new tab, not the existing one. Seems like this ought to be a very simple setting but I can't find it, and the tab managers on the Chrome site don't quite fit the bill. Anybody use a tab manager that lets you define preferences like that?

I'm using Imagus for Chrome and have no issues.

To open links in a new tab or bookmarks in a new tab...with FireFox anyways...I just right click the link and choose open in new tab.

In pretty much every browser you just need to click it with the middle button/mouse wheel.

Quick question: You know how when you open a new blank tab, Chrome shows eight thumbnail links of your most-visited sites under the search bar? If you don't want a site to appear there, you can click the X on the top right of the thumb ("Don't show on this page") and it goes away permanently. Is there a way to undo that and bring a site back?

I accidentally closed/deleted the OO thumb, and I would like it back.

I haven't tried it because I'm afraid to lose any of my sites, but this is what I found.

(1) The Most Visited thumbnails on the New Tab page are updated by Chrome to show the webpages you visit the most.
If you want to keep using automatically updated Most Visited thumbnails, but you have accidentally deleted one and you want it back, you can use the procedure:
simply delete any other thumbnail, scroll to the very bottom, and click "Restore All".
You may need to restart Chrome after the restore.

stessier wrote: ↑Sat Mar 17, 2018 1:11 pm I haven't tried it because I'm afraid to lose any of my sites, but this is what I found.

(1) The Most Visited thumbnails on the New Tab page are updated by Chrome to show the webpages you visit the most.
If you want to keep using automatically updated Most Visited thumbnails, but you have accidentally deleted one and you want it back, you can use the procedure:
simply delete any other thumbnail, scroll to the very bottom, and click "Restore All".
You may need to restart Chrome after the restore.

That worked, thanks. Figured it had to be something simple but hidden.

Google Chrome’s next update will finally block autoplay videos that have sound

Chrome 66 is now available and seemed to put a stop to Steam's autoplay Twitch when I tested it.

Help | About Google Chrome to get it to check for updates.

Over 20,000,000 of Chrome Users are Victims of Fake Ad Blockers

It's been a while since different "authors" started spamming Chrome WebStore with lazy clones of popular ad blockers (with a few lines of their code on top of them). That's how users could end up installing some "Adguard Hardline" or "Adblock Plus Premium" or something like that. The only way of fighting this stuff is to file a trademark violation abuse to Google, and it takes them a few days to take a clone down.

They got smarter now. Just look at the search results. All the extensions I've highlighted are simple rip-offs with a few lines of code and some analytics code added by the "authors". Instead of using tricky names they now spam keywords in the extension description trying to make to the top search results.

27 Incredibly Useful Things You Didn’t Know Chrome Could Do

Wait until you see #8!

Just kidding. No slide show, just good tips.

Moliere wrote: ↑Fri Apr 20, 2018 9:36 pm 27 Incredibly Useful Things You Didn’t Know Chrome Could Do

Wait until you see #8!

Just kidding. No slide show, just good tips.

After reading all 27 I like #10 the most:

10. With 60 seconds of setup, you can give Chrome its own quick-access scratchpad that’ll let you jot down thoughts right within the browser—no extensions required. All you have to do is paste a snippet of code into Chrome’s address bar. Click here or on the image below to view and copy the necessary code.