CHROME32 7 - 20August 2019
Control the volumeof
websites
Audio is a tricky business. All too often,
wevisi t a site andthe sound is just too
loud orfrustratingly quiet. Volume
Master (bit.ly/volume481) takes care of
this problem. Once you’ve installed the
extension, open a videoin your browser,
then click the icon. Sound plays at 100%
by default, but you have the option of
cranking it up to a whopping 600%.
It also has another excellent feature:
with one click, you can instantly switch
to a tab that’s playing audio.This is
particularly handy when a website plays
a video automatically andyou needto
track it downto mute it.
Volume Master treats each tab
separately, so you can boost the volume
for one video and quieten it for another.
One of the most common complaints about Chromeis
that it’s too slow. Back in2008, when the browser was
first released, it felt like a breath offresh air. Now,
however, it often feels as sluggish as Internet Explorer.
If you’ve been drumming your fingers on the desk as
you wait for another website to load, it’s timeto install
FasterChrome (bit.ly/fast481).
According to the developer, this extension “uses
just-in-timepreloading”. That’s a fancyway of saying
that it starts to load a page when you hover over its
link with your cursorrather than waiting for you to
click it. FasterChromewon’t do this for every page– if
you’re logging out of a site, for instance –andit works
best on pages within asinglewebsite. Preloading
increases speeds by around 300 milliseconds,
however, which in internet timeis about a year.
Focus onyour urgent
emails
It’s all too easy to get distracted
when checking your emails. You
start respondingto one message,
but then another one catches your
eye andyou find yourself mentally
preparing how to reply to it before
you’ve finished with the first.
If you find this a problem, it’s
timeto download Gmail Focus
(bit.ly/gmail481). Now when you
visi t Gmail, you’ll see only the details
of the top message in your inbox. All
the others are blurred out, with a
scribble effect that masks the
sender’s name, subject line and first
line of the message.
This makes tackling your inbox
much lessdaunting because you
can deal with your messagesone at
a ti mewithout getting distracted.
You can still click into any email to
read it, but thanksto the focus
effect, you won’t knowwhat’s in it
until you’ve openedit.Avoid makingspelling
mistakes online
There are plenty of tools that help you
improve your writing, but Language
Tool (languagetool.org) is easily one of
the best. It scans everythingyou write
on sites such as Gmail andFacebook,
andif you make a spelling mistake, it
underlines the word in red, just like a
word processor. Grammar andstyle
errors are underlinedin yellowandblue.
When you click a word or phrase that
Language Tool has highlighted, it
reveals somesuggested corrections.
Particularly useful is the option to
have the mistake explainedto you
so you can avoid making it
again in future.
You can also type or paste
your writing into the text box
on the official website. From
here,use the drop-down
menus to find out how your
words read in other
languages, including French,
Chinese and Japanese.Best New Browser ToolsBrowse the web faster than ever with Chrome