Chrome's Edit search engines screen

I’ve been a devout Google Chrome user since the day it came out. Over the months that I’ve logged using Chrome, I have picked up a few interesting tips that I thought I think are worth sharing:

1. Chrome Channels: You can actually switch Chrome over to a Development or Beta channel in order to get the newest releases of the browser. Often the new releases are faster and have new features like Bookmark Manager (explained below).

2. Bookmark Manager: When Chrome launched many users lamented the lack of bookmark management. However, if you switch to the Beta or Developer channel you get access to a full-featured bookmark manager.

3. Switch Tabs: Press Ctrl+(a number key) to select that tab. Pressing Ctrl+5 jumps to your fifth tab. This only works for tabs 1 through 9.

4. Close Tabs: If your mouse or trackball has a middle button you can click it anywhere on a tab to close it. No need to click the X. This is pretty standard behavior in tabbed applications, but I never knew it until I got a mouse with a middle button.

5. Custom Search Engines in Omnibar: You can easily edit or add Omnibar search engines. To add a new one, just right click on the Omnibar and select “Edit search engines.” Then look at the list, you might already have an entry for the website you want. If not, click “Add” and provide a Name, Keyword and URL. The Name is just a label, it doesn’t matter. Keyword is how you want to access this engine, if you choose keyword of “alpha” then anytime you type “alpha” and a space in the Omnibar it will start a search on that engine. The URL is just the action of the search engine, with “%s” substituted for the search term. For example, this is the search URL for Wolfram Alpha: “http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%s”. When you open a blank tab you’ll see a “Searches” section on the right side of the page, it will contain quick access to the search engines you frequently use.

6. Keyword Bookmarks: This is similar to adding custom search engines, but doesn’t require the “%s”. If you want to access a website quickly by only typing a few character shortcut, you can specify a keyword. For example, you can create a shortcut to Twitter by typing just “tw” in the Omnibar. To add a new shortcut, right-click on the Omnibar and select ”Edit search engines” and add a new entry with your chosen Keyword and URL.