Browsers have come a long way and evolved over time to make their interfaces contained, easy to use, and packed with advanced features. But the default new tab page in all browsers doesn’t seem to reflect that. I mean, it’s blank or there will be thumbnails of recently visited websites… but that gets boring after a while.
Take Chrome’s new tab page as an example. It has a sliding interface for apps installed from Chrome store and most visited websites and this helps us to enhance the browsing experience. But then you might want to do more with the new tab. This is exactly what we are going to talk about today. We will talk about ways to customize Chrome’s new tab page and also invite your opinion in the comments section to suggest more such methods. Let us get started.
Cool Tip: Did you know that F3 makes a beautiful Find Bar on Chrome? It’s a quick way to search for some text on a web page.
Open specific website
Until now, all browsers let you customize the homepage to open a specific web page when you launch your browser. However, I have not seen the same offer on new tabs. While there are other options you can try, you might be missing this feature.
No problem, there is a Chrome extension called Replace New Tab Page that can simulate such behavior for your new tabs. Install the extension and read our detailed article (including how-to in Firefox) to learn how to use and set it up.
Create thumbnail bookmarks
Dialing (UPDATE: This tool is no longer available. Use Speed Dial 2 instead.) is a bookmarking extension for Chrome. The good thing it offers is that it allows you to map your bookmarks as visual thumbnails. It overrides the original tab behavior and allows more than 8 thumbnails. The interface also displays a bookmarks toolbar that mimics the default look. At the bottom, it has a recently visited bar to stack recent items.
To add a new thumbnail bookmark, you can click on any blank dial. The next splash will ask you to define a Title, URL and Logo for which only the URL is required.
Also, for any current page, you can follow the Speed Dial Icon at the bottom of the address bar. Select option Add current page to see its thumbnail appear.
There are several options to set on the extension. You can choose row-column sizes, choose a theme or background, and select/deselect interface elements.
Customize Chrome’s Original New Tab Appearance
The new tab interface has an Apps bar and a Most Visited bar at the bottom. Users can switch between them as required. Now, if you want, you can add more bars to it and create a map of bookmarks. For instance, I have a Favorites section created for all my bookmarks.
To create a new bar, drag any link to that area and you will see that an additional application bar appears. Next, double click on the text and rename your interface.
Conclusion
These are pretty cool ways to improve new tab behavior on Chrome. If you have knowledge of something similar and helpful, let us know in the comments. Let us know if you’d like to see something similar for Firefox.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
