A common task for those who manage devices is trying to get a list of things installed on a computer. Plenty of the things are apps. But increasingly there are extensions in apps that expand the functionality of those apps. This is nowhere more true than in web browsers, where it’s possible to intercept endpoints and manipulate text on the screen. Google Chrome stores extensions in /Users/<username>/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions. To see a list of all of the extensions in Google Chrome, the following find command can parse through the directory, read the manifest.json, and find the name field. It’s quoted such that it will skip those that also have short_name defined…
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Disable AutoUpdates in Google Chrome
More and more deployments seem to come with sending Google Chrome out to client systems. Chrome is yet another application with built-in updating to make the process of owning software a bit less tedious for end users. However, in large deployments, we usually need to disable such a feature. Given how talented they are, the Googlers that built the automatic updaters went ahead and showed great foresight and made it easy to disable. Simply set the checkInterval key in com.google.Keystone.Agent to 0, done using defaults here: defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0 Once disabled, use defaults to set the checkInterval key to how frequently you’d like the check to run (in…
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Programmatically Changing the Mac OS X Browser
I am starting to get a lot questions on how to change the default browser for Mac OS X. I don’t know if it’s in preparation for summer imaging or if it’s because people clicked the button to reset their default browser to Chrome and then realized that, while fast, it just isn’t Safari. Either way, the default browser is stored in the com.apple.LaunchServices.plist, inside the LSHandlers array. Now, changing this with a defaults command would involve copying all the information into said command and then dumping it back in after changing all entries of com.apple.safari to the information for the browser you actually want to use. If you do…
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Mac OS X: Google Chrome's Developer Tools
Someone sent me a message telling me that they couldn’t use Mac OS X’s Chrome because it didn’t come with the same kind of development tools that other browsers will often come with. Not that I’m one to take sides in browser wars, but… Open Google Chrome and click on the View menu. From here, click on View and from the Developer sub-menu, click on Developer Tools, View Source or Java Script Console, similar options to what you have available in Safari. Have fun with that!
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Customizing Chrome for Mac
Yesterday I mentioned that Google Chrome is now available for Mac OS X. You can customize the screen that Google Chrome uses for Mac OS X. To do so, open the https://tools.google.com/chrome/intl/en/themes/index.html. Here, you’ll see a list of the available themes that you can use. Select a theme, and then, once selected, click on the Apply theme button below the theme. Viola, you now have a sexy new interface for Chrome!
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Google Chrome for Mac Available
It’s fast, it’s sleek and the tabs along the top help to conserve space (much like they did with the betas of Safari). It’s Google Chrome for Mac and you can get it here.
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Google Chrome for the Mac – er, kinda'
So since Google has been dragging their feet on getting Chrome ported to the Mac our good friends at Crossover have done a little wine-porting for us. Only problem is, it’s emulated, which means that the hot keys and menu-ing just aren’t, well, native. But, as you can see below it works and doesn’t require me to fire up a VM just to grab a screen shot…
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Google Chrome…
So there are tons of posts out there on the ‘ole interweb about Google Chrome. It’s cool, it’s fun but I’m not going to write the same thing you can read by googling for it. Instead, I just want to point out that no one seems to be asking, why in tarnation are they developing their own browser. I have my own ideas, but that’s just me. Who knows… But it’s a clean, nice browser and introduces some really nice new features that will likely be copied by Firefox, Safari and of course IE. Still waiting for the Mac port thought. Once that comes out I’ll do a write-up…
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Google Chrome Comic Book
I’ve not bothered covering Chrome much on my site because I’m pissy about not having a Mac version of the browser. But, I do find it amusing that Google made a comic book for it: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/
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Google Chrome???
What’s this about Google Chrome I keep hearing? Is Google really releasing their own browser?