14 DAY TRIAL // Google Chrome is shaping up to become a very strong contender in the “browser war” but it's still somewhat rough around the edges. Still, Google is focusing on the long run and is working on improving on every aspect of the experience. The stripped out interface stands out and usually gets the most attention but equally important are the actual interactions with the browser and Chrome is designed to make them as easy and intuitive as the rest of the application.
But what's the point of implementing great features if nobody knows about them, so here are a few tips and shortcuts from the developers themselves. First up is the primary way a user interacts with the browser, the mouse. Tabbed browsing isn't exactly a modern feature but users may still be aware of some of the shortcuts designed to simplify the process. When opening a link most users prefer to open it in a new tab in the background, which is why it's the first action in the right-click menu in Chrome. But there is an even simpler method of opening it in the background, by using the mouse middle button, which is usually in the form of the scroll wheel. An alternative to this is using Ctrl + left click.
There are other keyboard plus mouse shortcuts that may come in handy. Clicking on a link while holding down Shift opens the link in a new window while holding Shift and pressing the middle mouse button opens it in a new tab and switches the focus to it immediately. Finally, if you want to save the content from a link directly to your computer you can use the Alt + left click shortcut. Many of these shortcuts aren't Chrome specific, most work in Mozilla's Firefox too, for example, but once mastered they could make for a more streamlined workflow.
But what if you want to forgo the keyboard altogether? You can use fancy new-fangled functionality like “drag and drop” also. For example, clicking and holding on a link will allow you to open it in any of the tabs already used. Dragging the link over an existing tab will pop up a small arrow showing what tab it will replace. Releasing the mouse will then open the link in that tab replacing whatever page you had previously opened. Releasing it at the end of the tabstrip after the last used tab will open the link in a new tab. The really useful part is that the dragging link works for other programs as well allowing you to open a link from a word processor or even other browsers.
If you haven't given it a shot, you can download Google Chrome for Windows right here.