Category: Software

Tired of Chrome Slowing You Down? Try This Extension!

If you use Google Chrome, you may have noticed that the browser can be very sluggish at times. If you open multiple tabs, the problem gets even worse. Maybe you’ve tried closing tabs, restarting the browser, uninstalling extensions, or scanning for malware, but performance doesn’t improve. On portable devices, this can even drain your battery. This was true in my use of Chrome and it really started to frustrate me, so I went searching for answers.

Why is it like this?

Chrome has never been good at handling system resources, even if the user isn’t trying to do too much at once. That is, it takes more of your device’s computing power and memory to run than other browsers. This issue is compounded when multiple tabs are opened, as each tab needs places more demands on the device.

It makes sense that closing those extra tabs would then free up those resources, right? Unfortunately not. Even though you close the tabs, Chrome keeps them active in memory for easy recovery, so they’re never really closed.

What can be done?

Of course, you could always change to a different internet browser, but let’s assume you want to stay with Chrome. There are lots of extensions out there that claim to solve this slowness issue, and I have tried several with varying degrees of success. The one that worked best for me was Auto Tab Discard.

Auto Tab Discard suspends inactive or idle tabs, freeing up the resources needed to run them. You can choose to manually discard tabs or configure a time period for tabs to auto-discard. The default idle time is 10 minutes. If you don’t want a site to ever auto-discard, you can whitelist it for the session or for all time. The discard works like a pause. Your scrolling progress and any form text you entered are saved, but no Javascript (ads and widgets) or other draining activity continues.

Getting started

Once the extension is installed (visit the extension page while using Chrome) it starts working immediately. While this extension works just fine with its default configuration, if you’re a power user you may want to visit the additional settings mentioned at the end of this article.

To open Auto Tab Discard, click on the puzzle icon in the upper right corner of the browser. Then left-click Auto Tab Discard from the sub-menu. Pro tip: You may want to click the pin icon first to keep Auto Tab Discard visible in the toolbar, otherwise you will need to click the puzzle icon every time you want to access it.

Extension list

The basic menu that comes up allows you to choose to manually discard or keep tabs, or see more options:

Left-click menu

At first I was confused because the Keep Tabs for This Site area was grayed out for me. Then I right-clicked on the Auto Tab Discard icon and discovered a different menu that allowed me to keep the tab for this session. After I did that, the Keep Tabs for This Site “always” option was available in the left-click menu.

The right-click menu

You can tell a tab is paused by the icon next to the website’s favicon (underlined in red):

A paused tab with the indicator underlined

To activate the page again, simply click on the tab.

So many options

The options button at the bottom of the left-click Auto Tab Discard menu leads to a page with many, MANY options. You can customize just about everything (this is just the top of the list):

Full options screen

Give it a try!

Now that you know about the Auto Tab Discard extension, try it out today to see if your Chrome browser speeds up. Let us know how it went in the comments!

Wordle: The Game Everyone is Talking About

You may have seen Wordle mentioned on Facebook or other social media websites. Wordle is a popular word game where the goal is to try and guess a five letter word in six tries. Once you have solved the day’s puzzle, you are given the option to share your results on social media. The results show which day’s puzzle (denoted with a number, the puzzle pictured below was puzzle number 204), how many attempts it took you to solve, and how many letters you got correct on each attempt, along with the total number of tries you took.

Example of Wordle Results

The rules of the game are pretty straightforward. You enter a five letter word, and the letters you chose will turn either grey, yellow, or green. They will be grey if that letter is not in the word, yellow if it’s in the word but in the wrong place, or green if it’s the correct letter in the correct place. There is an on screen keyboard that keeps track of which letters you have guessed already, and whether or not they were part of the word or in the correct place in the word.

Examples of How to Play

As of right now, there is no official Wordle app, though there are many copycats on both the App Store and the Google Play Store. According to reviews, these are poor imitations and often have bugs or don’t accept valid words.

If you’d like to try out Wordle, visit this website. There is no registration required, and you can play one puzzle per day. If you are unable to solve the day’s puzzle, you’ll have to come back again the next day to try a new puzzle (or play on a different browser).

The New York Times recently wrote a story on the creator of Wordle, Josh Wardle.

Have you played Wordle? Do you have any other word game apps you love? Let us know in the comments.

Using Canva for Video

Our last post highlighted Snagit as an image and video editing tool, so we thought we’d highlight another popular graphic editing tool – Canva. You may have used Canva as an image editing tool, but did you know it can also edit videos?

If you aren’t familiar with Canva, you may want to start with this introductory webinar and article to get an overview.

The Canva: Getting Started webinar goes into more detail about Canva basics and starting a design from scratch.

The next video/article in the series, Canva: Graphic Design, focuses on more advanced concepts to make eye-catching designs and collaborate with teams.

When you are comfortable creating and editing still images, you can dive into the new video-creation features Canva has to offer intermediate users. Tech-Talk created two webinars about creating video in Canva:

Have you tried making videos in Canva? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Snagit: Image Editor, Video Editor, and more!

Snagit is an inexpensive graphic tool that offers lots of features for capturing and editing images and videos. While there is no completely free version of the software, there is a free trial on offer. If you decide to purchase the software, it is a one-time fee to install it on up to two computers.

Because there are so many features in Snagit, the folks at Tech-Talk covered it in three separate webinars.

Snagit: Capture Screens and Edit Images provides an introduction to this tool for beginners.

Part I covers:

  • Move and remove parts of the image with autofill
  • Add Callouts: arrows, shapes and speech bubbles
  • Use the Step tool to document workflows or a series of steps
  • Blur or pixelate sensitive parts of an image

Part II covers:

  • Swap specific colors with the replacement tool
  • Rearrange items in your screenshot with Smart Move
  • Use Perspective to view your image at a different angle
  • Customize the Ribbon and create Quick Styles to get to your favorites faster

Have you tried Snagit? Let is know what you think of it or share your favorite image and video editors in the comments.

Add Clickable Images to Your Emails

Image of a finger clicking on an imaginary mouse

There many different types of software that can be used to make an HTML email newsletter with clickable images, but what if you just want to add it to a regular email message? It seems like inserting the picture and then clicking “insert link” should work, but it doesn’t. As it turns out, both Gmail and Outlook have this functionality, but there is a trick to making it work, especially on the Gmail platform.

For instructions on how to add clickable images to your emails, check out this Tech-Talk article. If you are prompted to login, enter eglibrary as the username and password.