Most Useful Feature in Google Chrome – New Incognito Window

Althought I don't really like the idea that Google Chrome does not support Google Toolbar, the most useful feature in Google Chrome in my opinion is the New Incognito Window. At least this is true to me at this point in time. It is basically a “Private Browsing” mode. Basically you will see this guy when you’re in Incognito mode:

Steps to Turn Incognito Mode

If using short-cut key, you just need to press Ctrl+Shift+N or the following steps:

1. Click the Spanner Menu on your top right
   
2. Select the New Incognito Window
   

When you want to use “New Incognito Window”?

• Protect Your Privacy. Especially if you’re not the only one use your PC or laptop and you would like to keep some privacy that you don’t want to allow others to track your browsing activities, this feature is the best for you.

• Lazy to Clear Your Cache. As mentioned in the previous post that clearing browser’s cache is necessary to protect your confidential data for better security. If you’re using this “New Incognito Window”, you just need to close the window and everything is gone. You’re no longer need to manually clear browser’s cache.
  

To know about Incognito mode feature in Google Chrome, click here.

Use Clear Cache in Web Browser for Better Security

If you visit any confidential website such as accessing your bank account, it is recommended to clear the cache of the web browser after using it. I realize not many people practise this therefore I’m sharing this with you.

The reasons why we want to clear the cache in web browser is because the cookies or whatever temporary information that stored in the web browser may becomes a loophole for hacker to retrieve your login information such as your user name and password.

So to be safe or to be conservative for better security, we should clear the cache every time AFTER we use our web browsers to access the confidential website.

Let’s see how we can perform those steps from different browsers below:

• Steps to Clear Cache for ALL the Web Browsers

If the browsers have options for you to choose what I kind of data to be deleted, I usually select all of them. Let’s see the following example:


Firefox (Clear Private Data)

In Firefox, it is better to check the following (default is unchecked) if you don’t want to select all of them:

• Cookies
  
• Offline Website Data
  
• Saved Passwords
  

Internet Explorer (Delete Browsing History)

In Internet Explorer, it is better to check the following (default is unchecked) if you don’t want to select all of them:

• Form Data
  
• Passwords
  
• InPrivate Filtering Data
  

Google Chrome (Clear Browsing Data)

It looks like Google is doing a right thing which by default is to clear all the browsing data including the saved password, cookies and etc. I believe that is the right thing to do. Again, if I were you, I will clear all the browsing data especially the following items is a MUST in my opinion:

• Empty the cache
  
• Delete cookies
  
• Clear Saved Password
  

Having said so Google Chrome has one very amazing feature called Incognito mode. In Incognito mode, you no longer need to “Clear Browsing Data” manually. What you need to do is to open a new window in “Incognito Mode” and once you close the windows, all browsing data (e.g. cache, cookies, password and etc.) will be gone. I really love this feature. Cool isn’t it?

Note: As you can see, different web browsers like to use different name (i.e. Clear Private Data, Delete Browsing History and Clear Browsing Dat) for clearing their browser’s cache data. The default items what data to be cleared are also different among all these browsers.

Should I Quick Format My Drive?

Usually when you buy brand new hard disk from a computer shop, they will just perform a “Quick Format” for your hard disk.

The problem with the “Quick Format” it is completely useless. It takes less than 1 minute to format a 260G hard disk and if you perform “Normal Format’, it takes few hours to completely format the hard disk.

So next time if you buy a brand new hard disk, what should you do? You should REFORMAT the HARD DISK again. Check out what Microsoft says about Normal Format vs. Quick Format. 

Note: Normal format is also known as Default Format, Regular Format, Full Format or whatever you would like to call as long as it is not Quick Format.

You only perform Quick Format for the following reasons:

1. You have performed full “Regular/Normal Format” before and now you would like to make clean hard disk.
   
2. You want to quick erase all the data in the hard disk

Best Performance Web Browser – Google Chrome

Although I don’t like the idea the Google Chrome doesn’t support Google Toolbar, I can’t deny the fact that Google Chrome performance is really so far the best as compared to both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

At first, I don’t realize this until I pissed off with slowness while watching video in YouTube using Firefox. So, I just gave it a try with Google Chrome and surprisingly it loads way faster than Firefox. Perhaps I should change my mind? I really can't wait until the Google Chrome supports extension. When???

Let's see how Google Chrome rocks:

Source: news.cnet.com


You can also benchmark your browser by your own at futuremark.com (which I believe it should be more accurate). I have done mine and here are the results:

As you can see, Google Chrome is still the best among all these 3 browsers. Wait, look at the IE – can you see how it really sucks? Have fun to benchmark them by your own!