Quick tip: If you use Chrome or Chromium browsers and hardware acceleration is disabled for your graphics card, you can try to force it to get better video playback performance (for instance on YouTube) as well as support for features such as the 3D Earth view in the new Google Maps.

Google has released a remote desktop extension for Chrome. The extension works everywhere Chrome does (including Chrome OS and Chromium) and is as easy to use as it gets: there are no settings and you only have to enter an access code and you're ready to go.

If you like Bluebird, you may also want a Chrome / Firefox theme to match. Below you'll find a theme that matches Chrome perfectly and a Firefox 4 theme which isn't a perfect match for Bluebird but looks great nevertheless. The Firefox 4 theme actually integrates quite well with other themes too.

I had some issues with Adobe Flash crashing very often using the latest Firefox 4 so I've searched for a way to fix this and found a topic on AskUbuntu which says to use Chrome's Flash plugin in Chromium so I though - why not do it for Firefox? - and it's actually working quite well for now.

Chrome uses a built-in Adobe Flash plugin which seems to work better then the regular Flash. But there's a catch: you must install Chrome (and keep it updated if you want further Flash updates) even if you don't use it.

Hexxeh has made vanilla Chrome OS VirtualBox, VMware and USB drive images available for download so you can easily try out the latest Chrome OS nightly builds without having to compile it yourself.

A lot of people are experiencing red / pink (sometimes green too) tint on YouTube videos starting yesterday. The cause seems to be a combination of Flash 10.2, a recent YouTube change and the users graphics cards and seems to be browser-independent (can occur in Firefox 3.x, Firefox 4 beta as well as Chrome / Chromium). Here are some solutions which will hopefully fix the red YouTube videos bug.

Jorge Castro announced the release of a Chrome extension called Chromify-OSD that makes the build-in Chrome notifications use NotifyOSD. I'll make this post short because for some reason the extension doesn't work for me in either Google Chrome or Chromium.

WebUpd8 reader TP has sent us a tip regarding a post he wrote about getting all the websites to use the Ubuntu font on your system (or whatever fond the user sets as the default Desktop font - this should work with any browser you use) instead of the font they have specified in the CSS rules:

You've read about it many times, you've seen lots of screenshots but it was just a product of the future. Well, this time I'm not going to tell you anything except: Chrome Web Store is now live, so check it out for yourself.

Oh, and probably the most interesting new Chrome web application is TweetDeck for Chrome (ChromeDeck) - check it out HERE.

WebUpd8 reader conorsulli just sent us a tip about an Elementary scrollbars extension he's made for Google Chrome / Chromium. Even though the scrollbars are especially designed for Elementary and other GTK themes based on Elementary, the extension will of course work with any GTK theme.

To use, extract the downloaded .zip, then drag and drop the .crx file onto the Chrome window.

[Screenshot thanks to conorsulli]

In the previous post about Synapse, I was telling you that the more Zeitgeist dataproviders you have, the more info Synapse will return. For instance, right now you don't have any results in Synapse, under "Internet". That's because you need a Zeitgeist web browser data provider (currently the Zeitgeist dataproviders BZR provides 2: for Chrome and Firefox).

With the help of Alberto (who sent me the 64bit .so files), I've packaged the Zeitgeist dataprovider Chrome extension in a .crx file so you can easily install it in Google Chrome / Chromium.

Using this extension, the websites you visit in Google Chrome / Chromium will show up in the Synapse  (and other applications that make use of Zeitgeist) search results.

Here's a very useful feature that has been recently added to the Chrome/ium dev channel builds: an option you can use to set the plugins to "Click to play" (which is basically like a built-in Flashblock for Chrome). Using this option, Flash (and other plugins) content will never load until you click it.

Today is the last UDS-N day and a session about the default application selection in the upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal is ongoing. Here's what has been discussed:

Chrome/ium sync has evolved a lot and the latest dev builds allow you to synchronize almost everything between multiple computers - except tabs.

So what to do? Well, until Chrome will include a feature to sync tabs across multiple computers (such a feature is coming), you can use an extension called TabCloud.

If you like the new Ubuntu Font and use Chrome/ium, you can make all the web pages use the new font by installing a Chrome extension created by superpiwi @ UbuntuLife.

You'll of course need the Ubuntu font which is installed by default in Ubuntu 10.10 but if you're using an older Ubuntu version, you can either download it from HERE or use our Ubuntu Font public PPA.

It seems Google wants to move everything in the tabs - not only through its web apps, but with Chrome too.

A recent change in Chrome / Chromium removes the Options dialog as a separate window and you can now access it from a browser tab. This should make it a lot easier to implement changes to the Chrome / Chromium interface across different platforms.

I'm not sure if there are other reasons for implementing this, but I for one am very glad to be able to change the Chromium options from a tab instead of a window as it was a real pain to open the Options window on my netbook.

Ever since I started using Chrome (Chromium to be more specific), there was one thing which really annoyed me: AdBlock for Google Chrome / Chromium. AdBlock used to firstly load the ads and only then block them - something which seems very primitive to someone coming from Firefox where AdBlock Plus successfully blocks ads before they download... since forever.

Finally the Chrome web apps almost make sense: initially the Chrome web apps were just a normal pinned tab with a bigger favicon but now the Omnibar together with the menu and the bookmarks bar has been removed so you have a lot more vertical space for a web app tab than for a normal Chrome tab. This change comes in the latest build from the Chromium daily PPA (but it's probably in the latest Google Chrome dev channel too).


Note that the Omnibar / bookmarks toolbar has only been remove for the web apps tabs, the rest of the tabs still have everything in place.

But the major feature for Chrome web apps has yet to come: built-in notifications.

See how to use Chrome web apps for Google Chrome / Chromium.