LAMPdocs: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP

Today one of my friends told me that he had installed Google Chrome and he’s very satisfied with its speed.  I already knew about this browser and that was a chance to try it. I have downloaded and installed Google Chrome for Windows and here are my first impressions.

First of all. you should download a launcher that will download the whole installation package. Seems to be nice for those with a good Internet connection, but… I like to have all my installation packages stored on my hard drive so I could share them with my friends. But that’s Google and I think there are some reasons for such a strategy.

After Google Chrome is downloaded and installed, it will ask you to import your bookmarks and settings from Mozilla Firefox (it’s my main browser). After everything is done, the main window is started and shortcuts are added anywhere it is possible with no option to skip this step. Here is how main window looks:

I have somewhere seen the “Most Visited” panel, didn’t you?

Let’s go further: tab interface does not bring anything new. Tabs are located at the top and I didn’t find any option to move them to any other part. It is not so easy to customize Chrome at the moment, but I think this will be fixed in an official release of this browser.

Pages look very nice, for example, my blog looks like this:

My first impression is that Chrome has too few settings. At the moment it cannot be compared to Opera or Firefox: the number of possible tweaks is significantly lower than in each of these browsers. Here comes the settings window of Chrome:

Usual Firefox settings with Google as default search engine.  Nothing interesting and nothing special.

Minor tweaks are too minor: there are just some options that are related to paths and fonts.

Under the hood there are some options too. Too simple settings that could be found in any modern browser.

I used to perform mouse gestures while browsing (thanks to Opera). No plugins for this can be found at the moment and I won’t move to Chrome while this is not possible to do. My password manager completely ignores Google Chrome that’s why I won’t use it until its support is added. About the speed… well, I’ve got a 4096 kbit connection and page load speed is almost the same in all the browsers I have. I think the speed parameter will matter only on a low speed internet and even Opera, whose slogan was “The fastest Browser on Earth”, does not promote it any more: internet became much faster.

I’d like to say that I’ve expected much more from this browser. I’ve found no new features, no plugins and no real advantages, maybe because it’s beta. We’ll be waiting for a complete release. Until then Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer are your friends, if you’re on Windows

Today I’ll tell you about an excellent software that allows to create any kind of info backups. That’s greatly important as you will be able to restore anything you like in just minutes. For example, if you have installed a fresh copy of Microsoft Windows, you know how much time it takes among with software setup. Acronis True Image Home will revert your system to the tuned condition in just minutes. I’ve got a Russian version that’s why I won’t post any screenshots here.

Acronis true image Home is a powerful software that allows you to deal with any kind of data backup. It comes with scheduler so you won’t even need to create your backups manually – you will just have to keep your backups in a safe place. The rest is done with this software – I consider it’s more useful than Norton Ghost (I’ve used it for some time).

Acronis True Image Home also comes with secure file shredder – you can now safely delete your files. You can also Protect your privacy by cleaning up your activity track stored by Windows.

I suggest you to download and install this software. I think you will be impressed with all the features it has and I think it’s worth its money

Do you know Snap.com? If you don’t I’d encourage you to visit it as their tools make web much better. Even if I don’t like Ajax and Javascript tools, that often overload sites, I consider having site screenshots is a very good idea. But… where to take these shots and how to do them? If you try to do this manually, you’ll have to press print screen, then to run paint, then save the image, then rename it… Hard work, isn’t it?

If you want this for one site and want to see what’s shown to user in different browsers, then browsershots.org will be great for you. This service allows to take screenshots with different browser – this is the most comprehensive tool related to page screens I’ve seen on the Web.

There is also a Windows software that allows to do this. It’s Thumbnail Grabber. Thumbnail Grabber is a free utility for creating thumbnail screenshots of web pages in JPEG format. You can choose web page size (width and height) and thumbnail image size (in percent of the web page size). The program can batch process URLs and domains from a text file that makes it extremely useful for sites that have reviews or galleries, etc.

Now the process of Image creation is very simple. All you have to do is to have a list of web pages to crawl and Thumbnail Grabber will do everything for you. Nice that it doesn’t capture any browser elements, so your screenshots are clear and look great

Seoquake is a browser extension that allows you to monitor multiple parameters that are important for search engine optimization. It doesn’t do anything extraordinary, but the information is presented pretty well. Google, Yahoo and Live.com indexation, number of pages in each search engine, Alexa Rank and other parameters. It is fully customizable: you may tune almost all features that Seoquake has. Here is how it looks like:

Just try it and I’m sure you’ll find it useful. You may get it here. Plugin is often updated so it will be working even after any SERP changes.