3 Nifty Browser Tricks That Everyone Will Appreciate | Dramel Notes

Mainstream browsers like Chrome and Firefox have quite a few features in common. Many useful ones are hidden in plain sight, such as the three listed below.

1. View site history: Click and hold the Back button when you’re on any website to get a dropdown list of pages you have visited before on that website.

2. Get site info: Look for an icon — usually resembling a padlock or a blank page — next to the address bar on a web page. Click on it to bring up a menu with information about the site you’re on, such as its security certificate and the cookies the site has stored on your computer. The information varies from site to site.

3. Search a site directly from the address bar: If you search a specific website often, instead of first navigating to it and then using the search box on the website every time, search directly from the address bar with a custom search engine.

On Chrome you can create a search engine via Settings > Search > Manage search engines. On Firefox, you can add one via Preferences > Search. You can also use an extension like Add to Search Bar instead.

If you want to use Google search to filter results from a particular website, prefix your search query with site: For example, to search Google for the term password tips and retrieve results only from MakeUseOf, type site:makeuseof.com password tips in Google search.

Which browser functionality can’t you do without even when you switch browsers? Is it available by default or does it need an extension to work? Tell us in the comments.

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20 Awesome Music Extensions for Chrome | Dramel Notes

For those of us who love using Chrome for our daily browsing, having the perfect music extensions on hand is pretty much essential to enjoying the day.

Music is life!

And since the selection of music extensions available for Chrome is changing all the time, it can be easy to miss the best ones coming onto the scene. You may not even realize how much you needed a certain one until you try it.

Drumbit

This drum machine is incredibly simple and totally addictive. All you have to do is hit a few squares and press play to get your totally unique drum loop. Save as a WAV file when you’re done, and use it in whatever other creation you’re working on.

Instant Music

This extension is for really lazy people who just want the right sort of music to play. Click the button, choose a genre and listen to tunes. It’s that easy. It will find you popular tunes that fit your choice and you just sit back and listen.

My Music Cloud

This neat service lets you store 250 songs in the cloud for free and play them using their Chrome app. You can automatically sync music from iTunes or import from Google Drive or Dropbox so the music is easily playable.

An upgrade costing €39.99/year will let you sync up to 10 devices and store unlimited tracks. This is basically the point of this app for most people: to be able to store music in Google Drive and access it on their iPhone.

AudioBox

The Audiobox app and extension combination is an excellent way to tie all your online music together. Connect your YouTube, SoundCloud, Google Drive, Box, Dropbox, and more all in the one place. Most of these services require paid accounts to connect, but paid accounts start at just $0.99/month, and also let you store files on their cloud servers.

What’s really impressive about this app is that you can create simple or smart playlists using your songs from a variety of online services. Then you can play your AudioBox playlists from any connected device (iOS and Android included).

Last.fm Scrobbler

This scrobbling extension has been around forever, but is the essential tool for people who still love tracking their music listening habits in Last.fm. Make sure you have it.

Deezer Control

For Deezer users, this is the ultimate extension. It gives you hotkeys, notifications and a popup for info and playback tools. There’s no web app for Deezer, so be sure to bookmark it.

Music Plus For Google Play

This is the Google Play user’s ultimate extension: notifications, a popup of information and playback tools, Last.fm scrobbling, and lyrics. Just what you need to keep the tunes coming.

Spotify Playlist Extractor

If you create a lot of playlists in Spotify, you might want to back them up in order to import them into other music players or to just keep your hard work safe. This extension makes it really easy, as you just navigate to the playlist in the web version of Spotify and click the extension button. Get your playlist as a M3U or JSON file with one more click.

Rdio2Spotify

In a similar vein to above, you might be keen to save all of your Rdio playlists to Spotify now that the service is closing down. This is the perfect tool — it’s not a Crhrome extension, but it’s a tool many of us should use quickly before it’s too late.

Songist

This is a really unique app on this list, in that it lets you play music from your own hard drive or USB. This is perfect for Chromebook users, who might have a collection of their favorite tracks on a USB they plug in occasionally.

With Songist, you can create a decent playlist for those files and listen to them using a familiar interface. This is a huge improvement on the default Chromebook tools.

Apps For Music on Chrome

There a bunch of other apps on Chrome, which basically just direct you to the web app. That said, most of these are huge sites and they are part of a Chromebook user’s essential music app collection, so be sure to get the app and also bookmark the site for everyday use.

Spotify — Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services in the world for very good reason. It rocks. Free plans are available, and paid subscriptions start at €4.99.

Google Play Music — Google’s own web streaming service. It lets you upload 50,000 songs from your own music collection, which can be automatically or manually added as you prefer. On top of that, you can buy individual tracks or subscribe to their unlimited service for €9.99. It’s a great way to blend your old favorites with new music.

SoundCloud — SoundCloud is a platform for original works of music, and has also become popular for hosting podcasts. As a free user, your uploads are limited to 3 hours of content, and paid accounts start at €4/month.

Stitcher — Stitcher is an interesting web service that lets you piece together a playlist from talk radio, podcasts and live radio on demand. It has a neat front page that will highlight some of the most interesting stories of the day, and the hot channels of the day. If you’re into random interesting stories, this is the perfect app.

Undrtone — Undrtone is a cross-platform music discovery service, allowing you to connect your Spotify, Deezer and Soundcloud accounts. From there, you can get recommendations based on your taste, your friends and their own tastemakers. Browse trending tracks, recommended hashtags or people to get a playlist for the day.

Soundtrap — This web app is one of the hottest things in music production right now. It lets you create original music with musicians from around the world, and mix the creation just as you would in Audacity — but it’s an online alternative Audacity tool. The beauty of it is that it’s a collaborative effort. If you make music, you need to try this.

Earbits Radio — This is a simple way to listen to free, curated, independent, ad-free music.

AccuRadio — Just about every online radio station in the world at your fingertips. The beauty of it is that they’ve created collections of stations for you, such as Christmas music, workplace moods music, genres and more featured collections.

PocketCaster — This unofficial Chrome app leads to the official PocketCasts web app, which is an awesome way to listen to your favorite podcasts on the web. And for a one-time fee of $9 you can sync your podcasts with your smartphone forever.

TuneIn — The unofficial TuneIn Chrome app takes you to the official TuneIn page, which is another fantastic directory of online radio stations and podcasts. One of the most unique things about this directory is you can get a list of local stations and podcasts in any area worldwide, talk radio stations, sports, music, language learning or pretty much whatever else you’re looking for. Children’s music, Christmas music, Folk, Disco, 80s, Classical and more. You can even organize all the stations you follow into your own folders.

What Do You Listen to?

So really, get all these music extensions and apps installed in your Chrome browser right now. You’ll never be at a loss for interesting music to listen to ever again!

What are your favorite music extensions for Chrome? Which web apps do you turn to every day? Which stations and podcasts keep you entertained the most? Tell us!

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One Data-Saving Reason to Use Chrome on Android & iOS | Dramel Notes

Back in November, the Chrome apps for Android and iOS received a big update — and a new feature — that will surely bring joy to those who have trouble staying within data limits due to their Web browsing habit.

The new feature is called Data Saver Mode and Google claims that it can reduce data usage by to 70%. When the feature is enabled, websites will be loaded without any of their images, thus reducing the amount of data downloaded per page.

Here’s how to enable it: In the Chrome app, pull down the three-dot menu and select Settings. Navigate down to the Data Saver option and toggle it on. Return to this option page in the future to see how much data the new mode has saved you.

The process is similar for iOS devices.

It’s really as simple as that. The lack of images may bother you at first, but if your data plan is really tight, then cutting your Web browsing data usage in half is definitely worth the inconvenience. Plus, Chrome is the fastest browser in overall usage.

Is this enough of a reason to get you switched over to Chrome? If not, what browser do you prefer and why? Tell us about it in the comments!

Image Credit: Chrome on Android by N Azlin Sha via Shutterstock

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How to Add More Remote File Systems to Your Chromebook’s Files App | Dramel Notes

By default, the Files app on Chrome OS provides access to your Google Drive storage online and the Downloads folder, which is your Chromebook’s local storage. But Google’s made it possible to extend the Files app with more cloud storage services and remote file servers, including Windows file shares.

Set this up and you’ll have easy access to other remote file systems. They’ll appear in the Files app and in your Chromebook’s standard “Open” and “Save” dialogs. You can drag-and-drop files between them, too.

How It Works

You’ll need to find new types of file systems in the Chrome Web Store. These are Chrome apps that use the “chrome.fileSystemProvider” API to integrate with the operating system, just like Google Drive does by default. This was introduced with Chrome OS 40.

How to Find More File System Providers

To find more file system providers, first open the “Files” app on your Chromebook. You’ll find it under the launcher menu — just tap the “Search” button on the keyboard and search for “Files” or click “All Apps” and look for the icon.

Google has made this more obvious now with a quick link in the Files app. Click “Add  new services” in the sidebar and select “Install new from the webstore” to go directly to the Chrome Web Store.

You’ll see a list of available services, and you can install them by clicking the “Install” button. Currently, you can install providers that provide access to Dropbox, OneDrive, Windows local network file shares (SMB), Secure FTP (SFTP), WebDAV, Google Cloud Storage, and a few other protocols.

File system providers like SMB, SFTP, and WebDAV are particularly useful, allowing you to access types of remote file systems that wouldn’t normally be accessible with a web browser. It’s now possible to access those shared Windows folders on a Chromebook, although it didn’t used to be.

It doesn’t appear in this list, but there’s also an official “Box for Chrome OS Beta” app that integrates Box.com storage with Chrome OS’s Files app. Another proof-of-concept app will provide a list of TED talks in your Files app. You may find others by searching the Web Store, too.

After you install the app, you’ll need to launch it and provide your credentials. After you authenticate, that file system will be integrated with your Chromebook’s Files app.

The Problem With This Feature: Developers Are Still Neglecting Chrome Apps

You’ll notice one big problem with this feature. Google has done the hard work of extending Chrome OS and its app APIs to make this possible, but most of the apps here — aside from Box.com’s beta app — are unofficial. Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive haven’t gone out of their way to create apps that integrate their storage services with Chrome OS’s Files app, so they may not work as well as official apps would.

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This lack of attention to apps isn’t anything new for Chrome OS. While Chrome OS works well at providing a powerful browser you can use to access the web, developers haven’t really jumped into Google’s Chrome app ecosystem. Rather than making Chrome-specific apps and integrating with your Chromebook’s Files app, they’d rather just work on their full websites and encourage you to open Dropbox or OneDrive in your web browser instead.

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