How to Use Google Chrome

One of the reasons people refuse to move away from Internet Explorer is because of the familiarity issue. With IE, users know how to add bookmarks, navigate to previously-viewed pages or even clear their cache and cookies with ease. When new browsers like Google Chrome comes along, first impressions are huge, and if they can't figure out how to use the above mentioned features in less than five minutes, they generally never come back.

Google Chrome is so awesome, that I wanted to put together a quick guide about how to use it. All of the old features are there, but many options are hidden in order to provide the user with larger viewing area. The benefits of Chrome are so immense that it's really worth getting to know. Thankfully, if you are a regular IE7 or Firefox user, you will see some similarities straight off, but there are some significant differences that could throw new users off.

When you open up Chrome for the first time, you encounter a homepage with blank boxes and a most visited section. Chrome keeps tabs on your most-visited pages, and similar to a bookmark function, it places thumbnails of your most frequently-visited sites for you to quickly navigate to right on that front page. I used Chrome twice before my faves started showing up. Since my company is based online, it's a nice feature, because I really do visit several websites regularly and there they are, thus eliminating the need for a bookmark toolbar like the one in Firefox.

If you prefer to open up to a regular homepage each time, you can edit the settings by opening the browser, clicking on the wrench in the upper right corner, select options and then the basic tab, where you can select a regular URL to be your homepage.

While we are here, the wrench button also allows you to view your history, clear your Internet cache, import bookmarks saved from other browsers, and selecting, "About Google Chrome" starts a check for new updates.